Dear Idea (Dress 177)

Dear Idea
A) Day 150! I am most excited.
B) I have had to postpone the making of this month's dress. What with Hamletmachine eating my days, and trying to keep house while my mother is away, I have no time.
BUT.
C) If I do another 365 next year (after a couple of months break.) I want to do a jewellery 365. It's broader, so there is more variety in what I can design, and therefore more freedom. This dress is based on a ring design I had, which i've seen in real life since then (someone else thought as I did.)
All my love,
IP

Dear Fashion, Image and Advertising (Dress 169)

Dear Fashion, Image and Advertising,
After a discussion on the nature of capitalism in Performance Class, going to a lecture on the elements of consumer culture was a no-brainer. The straps (and continuing lines) are thick satin ribbon, the ‘fringe’ ribbons at the base also. There are enamelled black numbers at the base of the dress.
All my love,
IP

Dear Dianne Wynne-Jones (Dress 137)

Dear Dianne Wynne-Jones,
Your books were such a focus of my childhood- You were the author (along with Roald Dahl) upon whom I could always rely to transport me, sick, home from school, into another world without the mild headache or minor stomach upset (that, to a child seems plaguelike in proportion). One particular image (among many) that remains embedded is that of a tribe of strange elfin creatures that wear the (traditionally Gaellic? Welsh? English?) neck-jewellery, the Torc. Today's dress is in honor of that forgotten necklace.
(The drawing on the left is a view of the back. The Torc itself is made of silver, as are the balls at the end of the ribbon at the back. The ribbon is knotted around the Torc, and is part of the plain backless sheath dress part.)
All my love,
IP

Dear Ilana (Dress 114)

Dearest Ilana,
You're lovely. I mean it- really truly lovely. You wrote me a sweet letter a fair while back that made my day when I needed it most- not just with the sweetness of the sentiment but the presentation too! Calligraphy monogram and your insanely pretty handwriting-all your style is like that- strong lines and intense contrasts. Yesterday after our class performance you were getting dressed for a party, and you were wearing this stunning satin backless creation that looked just amazing... so in honour of backlessness and the prettiness that is 1950s contrast:
(White satin, black calligraphyesque 'pool' lines, and  half-strawberry (with cream) brooch.)
All my love,
IP.

Dear After (Dress 94)

Dearest After,

What a lovely shop- a pity I couldn't afford to stay much longer, I had to go home and do homework (blarg).

But I did come out with these:

I then proceeded to experiment:

Feathers from my found-rainbow-lorikeet-feathers-stash:

Making springs:

Peacock Feathers:

Parts salvaged from a phone:

Nail-Polished-Painted Springs:

And, magically (I have NO idea how this happened. I mean, I meant to make something swirly, but this is very Wizard-of-Oz tornadoesque.)

So, from the springs came a 'lightbulb' dress:

Sorry for the late post,

(I'm not going to post the signature, because this post is so picture heavy,)

IP.

Dear Nicola (Dress 93)

Dearest Nicola,
I'm really very fond of you, so it's strange that I really only see you once a year (at Sally's birthday). You study silversmithing, so I was thinking about how you could incorporate silver into a dress.
This dress is really rather awfully drawn, so my computer being an uploadbitch is a rather awesome coincidence. I'll post it as soon as it's fixed.
The idea was, two silver 'clips' made from old singer sewing machine plates (see here for an incredible archive of singer 'plates') to hold a cowl neck together, and hold about three inches of hem into a mirror of the neckline.
All my love,
IP

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 ShoulderDusters (Dress 8)

Dear ShoulderDusters,
You're kind of silly, and over-the top, but between a girl in my classes' Art Nouveau diary, and the tutor's earrings, I got some sort of strange costume.
(The piece to the left is the continuation of the back of the dress' 'top layer'. Detachable so that the bottom layer can be washed thoroughly, while the top layer is more slowly-delicately-hand-washed.) The piece to the right is a side-view.

I'm not sure what the costume is for, a personification of the moon or an elf of some sort.
All my love,