Summer Projects!

This has been a busy summer, as usual. I've been sewing for customers, doing an internship, finishing up school projects, and throwing parties!

I threw a Baby Shower at our apartment two weeks ago for a friend who will be having a baby girl any day now. Above you can see a picture of the dining room all decked out for the party. Complete with pink polka dot curtains to go with the theme.

I've been working with a beautiful royal blue silk taffeta to make an 1850s Basque dress for a customer in Lancaster, PA. It's coming together quite nicely so far.

And, I've been working on a silk painting project! This project is my favorite. I thought that it was going to be much more challenging, but selecting a design that lent itself well to this media helped a great deal. Originally I wanted to silk paint an Alphonse Mucha image - that would have been very tedious to silk paint. This image of Iris flowers is much more organic and lends itself to the freedom of silk painting.

Here the silk is stretched on a wooden frame, push pinned in place, and the image transfered to the silk first with pencil or disappearing ink and then with gutta. I am using a water-based gutta that can be washed out after the painting is steamed when finished to set the dye. A gutta that is not water based would have to be dry cleaned out. I'll post more pictures as the process continues!