Happy New Year?

Oh hai. It's been a while. A few things on the go, including some custom pieces for pals of mine, photos soon, hopefully. School is in full swing, I was less than happy to return to classes after a really lovely return home to Edmonton (in spite of the -25°C weather). Projects this semester include an evening wear dress, drafting and sewing a designer knock off (yup!), designing and creating a corset, and a whole lot of illustrating, of course.

In between major projects we do several different draping exercises. This was last week's smocking drape - I used a lattice smocking pattern on a really soft bamboo jersey. Smocking is really strange in that it is quite difficult to plan out exactly how much fabric you need when you're not sure where you want to smock, if your pattern is curving, and so on. I didn't have much fabric to work with, and I wasn't certain I would like what I did. I therefore did not want to cut up my fabric too much, as I wanted to be able to use it afterward. So, for this exercise, I draped in such a way that I used as much of my fabric as possible, without cutting. From about 2 yards of fabric I think I cut away only a square foot or so.

I've been designing in this way recently, like an 18th century dressmaker keeping all that precious woven fabric in one piece. I've been coming up with some things that I quite like. Unfortunately I only had enough jersey to do half this dress. I'll figure something out. I'd love to wear this baby.