Dresses – Page 4

Julien Dress

08.02.2015 by Tracey //

Dress made by Tracey

Pattern, Draped on a Dress Form during a Workshop with Julien Cristofoli

Fabric, Striped Shirting from Mood Fabrics

After about 500 years on my dress form and sewing table, this dress is finally on ME! What a long time coming! Let me start at the beginning. When I began sewing, I knew that the skill that I wanted to learn most of all was draping a garment on a dress form. In fact, the entire reason that I stumbled on to Susan Khalje’s website was because I was searching for a draping class. At the time that I first found Susan, her website stated that there were no draping classes scheduled but to check back later. I went ahead and signed up for one of Susan’s jacket workshops instead which turned out to be WONDERFUL. (You can see the results of two jacket workshops here and here.) But I was still obsessed with draping, so I went looking for someone local who could come to my house and teach me to drape, and I found Lindsey. But she taught pattern making, so we scheduled those classes instead. I learned so much from her and you can see the results here and here. But guess what, I STILL wanted to drape a garment! So, on to Plan C. I figured I’d go to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Well, that was an exercise in patience while dealing with a bureaucracy. It turns out that since I have a masters degree, I couldn’t enroll as an undergraduate and I wasn’t qualified enough to enroll as a graduate student since I’m relatively new to sewing. Finally we figured out that I could get around all of that by enrolling as a non-degree student, but I couldn’t just go straight into draping, I had to take Fashion Tech first. You can see the results of that class here.

Picture this, my second semester at SCAD, and I enroll FINALLY in my first draping class. Hallelujah!! First day of class, I’m early, and I’m a complete and total geek with all my school supplies all ready to go. I’m sitting there. And I’m sitting there some more. I check the time. Someone else should be here by now, right?! Fifteen minutes in to my class time and I’m still the only one there. Turns out that I’m not the brown nosing teacher’s pet. I’m just the dumb ass in my 40s that doesn’t know to check my SCAD email (who even knew I had a SCAD email?!) to find out class was cancelled.

Plan D. What IS Plan D? I was out of ideas. And that’s about the time that I was checking out Susan’s website again (I am probably her most frequent visitor because I just like to look at her workshop schedule and daydream about taking every single one) and what?!……there it is, Draping Workshops with Julien Cristofoli are now scheduled. He’s coming! From Paris! I think that I emailed Susan and called her too. I probably confirmed my place at least 5,000 times. I sent in my deposit immediately. Then I obsessed over what natural disaster would occur to keep me from getting to Baltimore to learn from the master. And yes, when the time came, my flight was cancelled, but I jumped in the car and drove through torrential rain. And incidentally, it rained so much in Baltimore that an entire sidewalk slid off into ditch. It made the national news.

But I made it there. And Julien made it. I really don’t have the words to truly describe the joy I felt watching and learning from him. Julien is a lovely person, and the elegance and grace he has while draping really has to be experienced. This dress I’m showing you today is something that I started in Julien’s workshop for Tops (not Dresses). I had been short on fabric for a few of the previous exercises so I overcompensated with a lot of extra fabric, and my top turned into a dress instead. (I draped the back on my own, once I got home. It took me forever to work up the courage to try it by myself.) I can’t take credit for the choice of fabric. While we were draping, Julien casually mentioned how a stripe might look nice because you could really see how the fabric was shifting, and I seized on that idea and I used that idea. And it was a really good idea.

As I write this, I now have two workshops with Julien under my belt. At some point very soon, you will get to see the product from my second workshop with him. And guess what happened during my second workshop. The Baltimore Riots. We haven’t been able to figure out if I am bad luck for Baltimore or if Julien is. But whenever he comes back, I will definitely be there. So brace yourself, we don’t know what’s coming!

To see time lapse videos of our photo shoot and to hear about Santiago’s photography process, be sure to check out Facebook page.

Take care, everyone. See you soon.

Alabama Chanin, Part 3

06.21.2015 by Tracey //

Dress, DIY Alabama Chanin, made by Tracey

DIY Kit, Long Fitted Dress, Paisley Stencil

Fabric, Alabama Chanin Organic Medium Weight Cotton Jersey in Leaf Green and White

Photography by Santiago Vanegas

What do you do when you want to bring lights into the forest and you don’t want to drag in your light stands? Well, you bring your minions, of course. Our son and daughter got put to work this week. (“Just because you’re not in school doesn’t mean you don’t have to work.”) But they did such a great job rising to the challenge that Santiago put them in the pictures! I did need to be reminded multiple times to “quit looking at the children, and concentrate on what you are doing”.

And isn’t this setting beautiful?! I’ve often wondered if I missed my calling as a location scout for movies and television. At least with this blog, I get to pretend I’m one. And who knows, I could still possibly fulfill that dream with the film industry booming here in Georgia. Once, our house was in the running for a scene in a Denzel Washington movie, but we didn’t get picked. So when we got yet another letter in our mailbox from a location scout asking if we would be open to allowing our home to be used as a set, we immediately said yes. “Is it a Michael Fassbender movie?”, I asked hopefully. “Is it a Cate Blanchett movie?”, my husband asked hopefully. No and no. Just a shoot for a commercial. Oh well.

So here we are in the forest, and I’m wearing my long fitted Alabama Chanin dress. One of the things that I absolutlely love about these garments is that yes, they are hand made and yes, they are heirlooms, but they are not precious. These dresses are durable. I had no concerns wearing this dress wading through the stream and stepping over fallen trees. By the time I was done the bottom of the dress was caked with mud. No worries. I tossed it in the washer when I got home and it’s as good as new. Maybe even better. Some of my Alabama Chanin garments I’ve had for quite a while and they age really well. I like them better when they have been lived in a bit.

This dress is made using negative reverse appliqué. In this case, I stitched within the stenciled shape about an 1/8 of an inch inside. After stitching all the motifs, the area outside the stenciled shapes are cut away revealing the bottom layer of leaf green fabric. Then I appliquéd the white circles within the flower motifs using a blanket stitch to give it more of a 3d appearance. For more information on these techniques, pick up Natalie Chanin’s book Alabama Chanin Studio Sewing and Design.

We finish up our month of Alabama Chanin next week with two skirts. See you then!

Alabama Chanin, Part 1

06.07.2015 by Tracey //

Dress, DIY Alabama Chanin, made by Tracey

DIY Kit, Camisole Baby Doll Dress, June’s Dream Stencil

Fabric, Alabama Chanin Organic Medium Weight Cotton Jersey (in Brunette and Taupe)

Alabama Chanin Beads

Photography by Santiago Vanegas

June is Alabama Chanin month here at Featherstitch Avenue! If you haven’t heard of Alabama Chanin, please go to their website and read up about them. Or check out this short film by Gael Towey about Natalie Chanin and her company. (Scroll down Gael’s Portraits in Creativity to find the one on Alabama Chanin.) There is so much to learn about what they stand for. Sustainability. Growing and manufacturing in the USA. Open sourcing their techniques and materials. Because of their dedication to all of these things, it makes me proud to support what they do. I’ve also had the pleasure of taking a few workshops with Natalie Chanin, and she is one of my favorite people to be around. I could listen to her stories all day! There’s a fair amount of information out there about who they are and what they do so I have provided some links for you if you’d like to know more. But today, I’d like to talk about what Alabama Chanin means to me personally.

If you don’t sew, you may not know that sewing can be a very cerebral experience. When drafting a pattern, there is a fair amount of math involved. When constructing a garment, it’s like a puzzle, figuring out the order of the sewing steps, and making choices about how to finish the seams and openings. It requires a great deal of concentration and attention. Most of my sewing is like this. With Alabama Chanin projects, my approach is different. My preference is to buy a kit, in which the garment pieces are precut and already stenciled. So once I’ve selected my color and my thread, my decisions are pretty much done. This frees me up to simply focus on the hand sewing which becomes almost like a meditation. (All of my Alabama Chanin garments are 100 percent hand stitched.) From the moment that I “love my thread” (a technique taught by Natalie of relaxing the fibers of the thread), I move into a different headspace. I find sewing this way calming and centering. For this reason, I’m content to accept the kits as they are, making no personal modifications at all. It helps that they are made with forgiving jersey and at this point I’m very familiar with the sizing of their patterns.

Depending on the amount of embellishment, it can take quite awhile to finish. Each garment goes at its own pace. Some that I have made took me more than a year to complete, but I’m never powering through, trying to get it done. The cool thing about these kits is that they are so portable, and because I hand sew them, I can take them everywhere. I work on them in the carpool line or waiting rooms or on an airplane. (Yes, you can bring them on the plane! I use nail clippers to cut the thread instead of scissors.) For this dress, I used a variety of techniques–appliqué, reverse appliqué, beading, and embroidery. To see more detailed photographs of the embellishments, you can go to my Instagram.

And one more small note–if you read last week’s post, you know that I’m recovering from a dog bite. But you won’t see my injury in these pictures. Santiago retouched it right out. Now, just so you know, we have a strict policy about NOT retouching anything on me, but we thought you might appreciate us making an exception in this case. After fixing up the photograph, Santiago turned to me with a smile, and said, “Now doesn’t your arm feel better?” If only it were that easy!!

Have a great week, everyone! See you on Sunday!