All posts tagged: Hawaii

The skirt that Would Not Cooperate

Published by The Dreamstress

You know how some sewing projects should be easy, and instead you tear your hair out over them for months and months? Yeah, this skirt was one of them. I think I picked the wrong fabric for the idea I had, and the wrong idea for the person (my Mum) I was making it for. I just LOVED the fabric though – silk cotton voile, fuschia warp and red weft. It glows in the sunlight, is light as a feather, and is softer than silk cashmere. And I loved the idea of the skirt – it was based on the one my MIL wore for our wedding, and it looked so good on her.< Mum and MIL at the wedding. But the whole project almost defeated me. The voile didn’t want to pleat, I couldn’t find red thread, the black threads I settled for caught, and the tension went off. Lining fabric took forever to find, the pleats puckered…anything that could go wrong did. And then I realised that what looks fantastic on my 5’3″ …

I like creepy crawlies

Published by The Dreamstress

I like bugs and insects, the small many legged, winged, antennaed creatures that inhabit our world in untold numbers. One thing I am enjoying doing in Hawaii is finding bugs to photograph.  There are so many, and they are all (relatively) friendly and harmless.

My wedding dress: the fabric

Published by The Dreamstress

I went wedding dress fabric shopping in the spring and summer of 2005. It was not a good season for bridal fabric.  Or even for bridesmaid fabric. Everything was deadly boring. I looked, and looked, and looked.  I looked in Wellington.  I looked online.  I looked in San Francisco.  I looked in Oakland.  I looked in Palo Alto. New York City was my last resort. So, when I wasn’t visiting museums and taking photos of flowers*, I scoured the fabric district. I’d seen a piece of stonewashed silk charmeuse in Oakland, and I was in love with the fabric (not the colour though – it was bright coral).  But there was no stonewashed silk to be found, and the only things that I found that I liked even half as much were over $60 a yard – too much to pay. Finally, digging in a huge pile of rolls in a little tiny designer ends fabric store , I found the holy grain – a roll of palest ivory stonewashed silk charmeuse. It was a …