gatormade

ok, back to stuff i’m working on…

recently i started studying with sumie tachibana, a really awesome designer who lives nearby in l.i.c. she’s the real deal. i’ve almost completed my first project in class–a dress made from a silk sari that my friend sarah-jane brought me from india last year. the dress was created from a 1950’s vintage pattern.

it’s about 90% finished, i just have to fix a really jacked-up seam i made and sew in the zipper. it was extremely difficult to make. silk is so slippery and tricky to work with and matching up the lines on the fabric made it even harder. overall though i think it came out really well. i just kinda think it looks like a school uniform!

as a side project i decided to torture myself by making a similar dress with equally challenging fabric…grrrrr….it’s coming along ok, but nearly as neat as the dress i made in class…

well, since the main intention of this blog is to showcase my works in progress i decided to finally post a few.

at the moment, i am halfway finished with this sari bedspread…

sari bedspread

i recently redid our bedroom. it’s very small and was once a deep red color. we had so much clutter that i was beginning to feel like cave so we decided to go yellow! of course i had to keep in with the indian style and i bought this amazing book called ‘alter your space‘ and used that as a guide. i had such a hard time choosing a trim color. in fact i painted and repainted the trim about 5 times when finally i revisited the book and saw this beautiful turquoise adorning a wall. i knew it would be dramatic but i went for it.

i decided to also make my own matching sari duvet cover. it seemed like a simple enough project to execute, but it’s ALOT of fabric to deal with. seriously!

first i cut two sari’s and sewed them together and bought mid-weight fusible. just ironing on the fusible made me want to give up! when i spread it on our bed though, even in it’s unfinished wrinkled state, i was totally in love!