Dear Beer (Dress 206)

Dear Beer (Day 161)
I don’t really like you. I have to admit. More of a fan of Cider, but you are the inspiration for some damn Fine advertising.
J’enjoy.

Today’s dress is made to advertise beer.
Why?
Why not?

The skirt is printed as a coaster.
All my love,
Ip.

Dear Weddings (Dresses 196-205)

Dear Weddings (Day 160),
You make people all excited and festive and optimistic. I like that, even if I find the institution a little sillygoose... Most of today’s dresses inspired by the woman on my tram who was all dolled up to go to a spring day wedding.

Dress I: Wedding Dress: silk dress with painted silk feathers)

Dress II: Bridesmaid’s Dress: comfortable cotton with a silk overlay, painted on the stomach region, petals and the central section of the flower then cut out of the dress and arranged as a corsage/hair ornament.

Dress III: Flower Girl Dress: a photographic print of petals being thrown in the air, with some already falling and a border of petals.

Dress IV: To wear to a wedding in winter: silk ‘paragliding’ sail as headband/hood with silver chain and silver bird on a black matte silk dress.

Dress V: To wear to a wedding in Autumn: Tiny panels of grey slate over a lighter grey dress with architectural grey ‘gutter’ (lace)

Dress VI: To wear to a wedding in Winter: Woolen dress with 2D scarf

Dress VII: fringing over mesh on the neck, waist and hem.

Dress VIII: Indian fabric under an elastic corset.

Dress IX: To wear to a wedding in Spring: black ribbon outline hand-painted filling on matte silk.

Dress X: perforated ‘stamp’ hem with ‘wing’ collar and buttons to below the waist.

All my love,
Ip.

Dear Jamie Oliver (Dress 164)

Dear Jamie Oliver,

You're the author of Jorge's favourite go to cookbook for which I am forever greatful. The food he's made me from the depths of stained-corner-folded-pages is always spectacular. There's this one salad with fetta and cheese and all sorts of deliciousness. I likes it.

Om nom nom nom,
IP

Dear Darryl (Dress 122)

Dearest Darryl,

We used to go to your lifedrawing classes, my mum and I, every wednesday of my year 12. I don't remember his name, but there was a fellow there that did a lot of hypercolourful works in conte chalk and paint. I remember his teeshirts at the end of the three hour artwork extravaganza were covered in psychadelic smears of paint- the product of a brush absentmindedly cleaned in an almost feathery pattern from right hip to left shoulder. Why not make a dress a palette? I'd love to make this dress in plain white, and just let artists go wild in a range of them- have someone do action paintings, pollock-esque, or rennaisance oils, or dusty brilliantly coloured conte chalk.

This drawing is a little on the simple side in terms of colour, it's meant to be an example of what you could do with a white version of the dress.

The 'hole' on the right is meant to be a hole to the skin, but I think I drew it a little to large, if it were smaller i'd like it to show just a little of the under-breast.

All my love,

IP.

Dear City Hatters (Dress 121)

Dear City Hatters,

When I have a million billion squajillion dollars I will not be so frightened of going to you.

As it is now, I can't afford a 300$ Top Hat, but i'd happily make a 30$ or so alternative.

(Matte Satin with a beaded feather embellishment)

All my love,

IP

Dearest Irit (Dress 97)

Dearest Irit,
You are adorably frightened of ferris wheels.
You are also my aunt. There may or may not be pictures of six-year-old-ip holding your hand and smiling as you scream your lungs out at Luna Park....
I ought to toddle off to bed, but just a quick update:
Onto book 4 of the 365series.

It looks like there will be 12, maybe 13? depends on how many 10dress penalties I have to do. So exciting to line them up like this! It really looks possible.
All my love,
IP

Dear Beautiful Red-Head Girls, (Dress 90)

Dear Beautiful Red-Headed Girls,

You're some of the most gorgeous specimens of female loveliness walking the earth. There's something about cascading russet hair, next to that beautiful milky skin that is the designer's dream: think Lily Cole or the (admittedly bottle-red) Christina Hendriks. (Also: My best friend and fellow sewingmachinemistress Alice.)

For those lovely lasses also blessed with the equally rare and gorgeous genetic trait for green eyes, there's this:

Lightweight green polyesters, twisted and under-pieced together, zip on the left side.
All my love,

Dear Valentine's Day (Dress 73)

Dear Valentines Day,

In my attempt to make you an exercize in affection and not a work out for my bank account last year I made about one hundred paper roses and covered the house I was housesitting with my boyfriend (at the time). I went Massively overboard, ah; the follies of youth!
I still love making paper roses, and last night, wonderng how they would look in reinforced fabric, I came up with this:
(creme brown lattice, with green mesh inbetween, dark brown ribbon for the 'rosebush' and burgundy rose at the top left. I'll ink the drawing and colour it later Dress 71 has been inked! go check it out.)
All my love,

Dear Wine and Cheese (Dresses 67 and 68)

Dear Wine and Cheese
you are the only things i have ingested today. not feeling so good.

All my love,

Dear Winter Night (Dress 61)

Dear Winter Night,
Everything about you is intense and electrifying, the cold setting into my bones, flushing my face pink, making everything seem saturated with colour and charged with bright energy.
Today's dress is cold and clean- silk mesh edged with an iridescant macaw greeny-blue satin piping. There are four layers of the mesh on the bottom, to allow for the camouflaging of a corset bodice, the bones of which are encased in the same material as the piping, with a feather-edge attatchment.

All my love,

Dear Moroccan Tea, (Dress 51)

Dear Moroccan Tea,
You represent everything that is middle-eastern hospitality, delicious; piping hot and sweet as sin. Served in various styles of glasses, be it patterned, bulbed or espresso- you are always small enough that the host feels useful as they refill your glass for the fourhundredth time.

(Dress Specs: Screenprinted cotton w' applique for the glass, crepe sleeves dyed to match.)

All my love,

Dear Homer C/O Aristotle (Dress 49)

Dear Homer,
We had the Iliad on tape when I was little- I think the language was somewhat altered for the sake of modern listeners, but the form and content (to my memory) were the same. The stories (for, as the 'stot tells us, Epic poems are but collections of stories... -can you tell i've been doing my theatre readings?-) captivated me, all passion and bloodlust and battle and honour and other such over-the-top sentiments.
What always stayed was the image of thousands of ships setting sail at the conclusion of the battle- bedraggled and exhausted, but nevertheless enthusastic to be on their way.

All my love

Dear Mondrian (Dress 34)

Dearest Mondrian,
I meant today's dress to be a subtle tribute- it turned out just kinda silly; but I think it'd be a nice summer staple. Light cotton with white lining.

All my love,

Dear Lady Cottington C/O Brian Froud (Dress 31)

Dearest Lady Cottington (Care Of: Brian Froud)
I devoured your book as a child, enveloped in the idea of exploration and discovery and (most important; for an eight year old) Fairies.

I'm a little older, and nevertheless, although the fairy phase has been and  gone, and taken with it a host of other childhood obsessions, I always come back to the book- perhaps because of the beautiful calligraphy, more probably it is the stunning watercolours by the genius Brian Froud- their delicacy and blend is simply stunning; and so we have:

Dress for a pressed orchid:

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,

Dearest Sean Ellis (Dress 4)

Dearest Sean Ellis,

There was this girl walking through the university in a pretty green and white polkadotted dress, and suddenly there sprang to mind this image, Sean Biggerstaff leaning on a freezer, staring, one arm propped up; as a galaxy of frozen peas melt at his feet.
(Cashback, Sean Ellis 2007)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTG7u1R6cUQ&feature=related
(See 1:50-2:05 in particular)
So gather the spots on your dress pretty girl, and you can have a galaxy of peas:
All my love,

Dearest Co-Commuter (Dress 2)

Dearest Co-Commuter,
You had the most amazing eyes- they looked somewhat like a collage of autumn leaves in chocolate hues, and the idea of printing photographs of irises on fabric stayed on my mind, until this idea popped in:

Definately a better idea to start designing earlier in the day- I had time to work on both colouring/patterning and actual dress shape.
Really excited for tomorrow!
All my love,