I Put on a New Hat

Today my cold is much improved--and none too soon as today began a new creative endeavor for me. Well it's not my creative endeavor exactly, it's my daughter Jessie's. She decided for some strange reason to participate in the art department's fashion show this year. I am still puzzled as to what inspired this fantastical adventure, but we're on it now! I get that she likes to draw models with fancy haute couture clothes. But she doesn't sew. She made a pair of pajama bottoms in middle school and hated it. Now she's not only signed up to do the designing, but also the pattern making, sewing, embellishing and fitting of two evening gowns. In a week. With no one to help but me and You Tube. Thank heaven for You Tube! How did we learn before it? Sure you have to sift through the chaff, but there's plenty of wheat to be found.

I grew up sewing. My Mom made all of her and my clothes and a good portion of my father's. But my Mom never had a dressmaker's form so I never learned how to use one. I learned how to sew with pre-made patterns. You picked the pattern, you picked the material. You laid it out, cut it, and sewed it together following the instructions. Almost nothing i ever made fit the way it should have or turned out looking as I had envisioned it. Probably because I never made the connection between what my hands were doing and why they were doing it. I just followed the instructions, I didn't try to understand why they were written as they were. I learned to cook the some way. I followed directions without questioning the reason for each step. I never tasted as I was cooking, and I didn't try on as I was sewing. It's no wonder I wasn't very good at either.

As I've gotten older I am more inclined to color outside the lines. When I decided to make my wedding dress I went looking for a pattern, but I couldn't find anything I liked. However I found the top I liked on one pattern and the skirt on another. My mom said she would help me combine them, and then she also did all the hand sewing on the heavy lace for the bodice and sleeves. A few years later, the first time we moved to Austin, I bought a dressmaker's form and made a long, formal gown of bronze and black raw silk. It was stunning, and the learning process bumped my clothier skills up a notch. Now I am very conscious of what I am doing each step of the way through a process and why. And it's a good thing too as nothing I've done is anything compared to this first lovely swan dive of my daughter's.

She is creating off of nothing but a sketch that was a vision in her head, and she's going to turn out a fitted garment for a model to wear on the runway... Breathtakingly audacious. SO how did we begin? We got a dressmaker's form and started draping a dress. At the end of the day we have pretty much refined our first stab at  draping a pattern (we draped, we turned it into a paper pattern, we cut out the dress from sample fabric and sewed it up, and now we're repinning it and refining the lines. Tomorrow the goal is to complete the white brocade sheath and start on the gold ruffly shoulder and and trim around the bottom. Oh yes, and maybe to start beading the band for the neckline...