A Rose is a rose is a rose...

Ashley's dress is coming along nicely. Her base fabric is a chocolate brown fabric with roses woven into it. Since Ashley loved roses, it was not hard to imagine what her dress was going to be like :-) She has spent the last year designing it and now it is finally being made...

Her top panels are shown below. The "pleat" panels will have pink satin with a lace overlay and a lovely pink organza ruffle.

Ready!

Susie's dress is finished just in time. She will come and pick it up tomorrow.
I love the green colors on this dress. It is so bright and fresh together! The cape is a sequinned tye-dye chiffon with 2 shades of green on it. You cannot really see the tye-dye pattern in the picture due to the flash, but it has more contrast with the base fabric in real life.

Susie's dress

Susie is going to the Oireachtas in Berlin and needs a new dress as her old one is sold! I am furiously working to meet the deadline...
Her teacher said that after the black and pink dress, she might need a different color. The green is very bright and cheerful. The base fabric has nice embroidered spirals and a slight two-tone effect.

Her panels (petal style) have been embroidered, stiffened and lined and are ready to receive the final satinstitching around the shaped edges. Then I can sew these panels together halfway and start on the back sections of the skirt.


**Please note that I am fully booked until january 2008 and can only accept new orders for delivery in february 2008**

How-to satinstitch straight

Sometimes people ask on the web how they can transfer their designs onto the fabric of the dress. There are many ways to do this of course, and here I show one: the paper tissue method.

This method is particularly good when you have to embroider onto fabric when you have no edges of the applique to follow. In this example I need to do straight lines of satinstitching onto a pink area.


Firstly I have the area drawn out onto tissue paper and have marked all the stitching lines. The paper is then pinned onto the fabric and I stitch the outline with a large running stitch to hold it in place.
When the paper is in place I stitch out the lines I need to embroider and then I remove the paper. The stitchlines are now marked clearly (if you use a contrasting thread of course :-)



Now it is time to satinstitch the marked lines... perfectly straight!