Dear Thief of Time (Dress 194)

Dear Thief of Time,
You're absolutely, without a doubt, one of my five favourite Pratchett books. Susan is one of my favourite characters, and it's really got potential to be one of the next SKY1 adaptations. (Pardon my nerdsplosion here)
So when the main plotpoint is the trapping of the anthropomorphic personification of time (a woman) in a clock, this dress sort of seemed appropriate.
All my love,
IP

Dear Collectors Everywhere (Dress 133)

Dear Collectors Everywhere,

You have these strange obsessions- you require the most meticulous of specifications in your collecting- autographs must be framed, and mounted, and photos, and strips of film; oh my! Even though he only collects books (which doesn't count. Really! It's exempt in every way... can you tell i'm justifying my own, embarrasing National Geographic collection?) Jorge has a couple of autographs- bought from those collectible poster stores I imagine, and they have little strips of film in them from the films the actors starred in- kindof silly when they're mounted on blue board and you can't see what's on them!

Silly it might be, but it's responsible for today's dress.
All my love,
IP

Dear Rostand (Dress 126)

Dearest Rostand,

I love that play. I love that film. I love those words and those settings, those plots and those characters- and most of all I love that moment. That quivering vine from Roxane's hand all the way down to sweet enamoured Cyrano unerneath her balcony, whispering his love and praises of her through the lips of a man he cannot compete with.

I'd love to use traditional book-plate-printing techniques for this dress' design.
The image is Cyrano reclining in a book, from whence comes the wall, vine, balcony and window.
All my love,
IP.

Dear Antoine (Dress 116)

Dear Antoine,

Your book was a central influence on my childhood, now, as it gets cold, I remember snuggling up in my cushion corner (I made one every winter next to the heater for reading) and reading the hours away. Your story entranced me, and enchants me still.

The dress is cotton dyed yellow with light blue printing.

All my love,

IP

Dear Sean (Dress 91)

Dear Sean, I remember once we were talking in the bookshop (where we both work) and you were saying, in that almost unbelievable accent 'ah cant understand how the maek yer study Beckett in school. Yer children fer god's sake- what the hell do you know?'
And i think you're almost entirely right!
(Which did not make this evening, centre row seats less than 10m from the stage any less magnificent.)

Thank Beckett (and my boyfriend) for a wonderful night,

(Rope around the waist, rope 'piping' on the top, which is twisted into a 'noose knot' and then 'splits' into the shoulder. Cotton and a black applique bowler on the bottom.) 

All my love,

Dear Red Wheelbarrow Books (Dress 39)

Dearest Red Wheelbarrow Books,
I've never been happier to work than I am amongst the mustyish smell of books. Tomorrow night you become something more than that, from a church of literature, to a (nondenominational) place of happiness when two people get married there. I'll be bartending the reception- and when I was thinking of what I could wear that was both pretty and splatter-safe it seemed inevitable that they become one item of clothing (now with 20% free splatter.)

Dye-washed cotton with a pieced-in black cotton/something stain resistant blend apron. 3D bow fixed at the back, zip down the side.

All my love,

Dearest Ovid/Ted Hughes (Dress 9)

Dearest Ovid/Ted Hughes,

I was reading your short story (from Metamorphasis) about the abduction and Rape of Proserpina and the mental image of 'She was heaping the folds of her dress with flowers' meant that all day my ideas involved grecian inspired dresses and using Kansashi Flowers (Japanese fabric flowers) to 'spill' flowers down the front.

This is a two-tier meshy material dress, with full circle skirts and piping on the bottom hem to accentuate the fullness of the skirts. There is a headband attatchment that has a ribbon (possibly wire-structured?) to 'spill' the Kanzashi through the hair. below the bust (the two lines of flowers from left and right that meet in the middle) are attatched directly to the dress.

Kansashi are an AMAZING artform, really delicate and pretty- but fiddly and difficult to make. I'm yet to perfect it, but I plan to do some serious folding in the next little while.

Vivcore has a phenomenal resource page where she posts the extreme old-school Kanzashi she makes:

The occasional Pop-Inspired arrangement:

And tutorials, with step-by-step photos.

Hurrah!

(Tutorials FTW. Some tutorials planned for ImPrint in the next little while.)

All my love,

Dear Ted Wallace (C/O Stephen Fry)

Dear Ted Wallace
It's probably a rather long stretch, but I just devoured your story (otherwise known as Stephen Fry's 'The Hippopotamus') and it was marvellous and frazzled and in the two days i just lay on my bed and read, and ate, and went to work, and came back to read some more, all the pent-up creativity of idle hands built and are now coming to life: shaping up to be: (and you'll like this; it is a list, after all)

1) Preliminary sketches for the Imprint-By-Ip Banner

(Have I mentioned watercolours are FTW?)

2) Easy peasy tutorial, up soon...

(Strangely simple... hmmm.)
And the early stages for what I think might turn out to be a cross between this:


Alice+Olivia Red Belted off-the-shoulder Dress (image credit: fashionfuss.com)
and this:

Jason Wu Isadora Sundress (image credit: Couturecarrie.com)

A most inspiring week to you all,
We'll see what we can glean from this crop of productivity,
All my love,
IP.