Dear Kate, Stevie & ? (Dress 101)

Dearest Kate, Stevie and ?
You were that hospital for a good three days... Wow. Congrats to a new little family.
So to Alice, or Olive, or the surprise out-of-left-field name they might pick for you.
Welcome little bean sprout!
(White silk stretched on solid thick white crepe, (switching to white elastic material on the neckpiece) with painted ink, and a leather tongue holding in the neckpiece.)
All my love,
Cousin IP
(Yeah. I'm evil. Sorry.)

Dearest Pina Bauch (Dress Made 1)

Dearest Pina Bauch,
This dress was damn HARD. I've never designed and then made a dress from scratch- i'm not very happy with how it came out, but i'm just relieved it came out on time in one piece. It's really the wrong week to be making a dress- i'm stressed as hell and today has NOT been a good day, but knowing I'm carrying a product of my design in my bag is a pretty awesome feeling.

I started making the dress at about 3pm ( I think) it really did not work, and when I realised that the fabric did not stretch as much as I thought it did, and the quick-fix-remedy I tried did not work, I chucked a MASSIVE tear-fit,  drank a glass of concrete (as they say), toughened the f*** up, and started again. Bloody hell. But I managed to salvage the skirt from the old dress for the new sleeves, and even though my machine freaked out towards the end the new dress was done by 11pm. 

It fits like a hero (losing a kilo or two definately would not hurt either) as long as you don't look at the stitching on the inside. Nothing is worse than tension troubles in a machine.

These photos are even worse than the product, I'm just proving I made it, and I'll post proper photos later.

Image 1: just a plain shot of the dress hanging on my purple door. (awful, I know. I picked the colours for my room when I was 13!)

Image 2: Stretched out the sleeve so you can see the shape of it. If you look closely you can see the elastic straps.

All my love,

(And exhaustion)

IP.

Dear Jorge (Dress 100)

Dearest Jorge,
I like you.
You're nice.
Translation: thanks for keeping me happy and/or sane. You're amazingly patient, especially when I just have to stay up that extra ten minutes to post the blog, or I have to turn the really bright light on at some ungodly hour to take the photo of the design (It's easier to take a photo of the book than to scan it. also: faster.) or when I suddenly, in the middle of my sentence and for no particular reason have to get the book and scribble an idea down. You're patient, and lovely, and pretty darn sweet, so your dress gets a title and everything:
A meditation on Art Deco (or why I can't design another dress after the aesthetic of Bioshock II)
All my love, love, love,
IP.
P.S. I made the Pina Bausch dress today. It's not perfect... Hell it's not even very good, but it's the first dresss i've ever designed and made from scratch, and I'm just glad I managed to make it on time. I'll post photos etc. tomorrow. Goodnight all!