Paint the Town Pink

A sneak peak at what's going on with the dress... (although the final product is still drying and has some work to be done on it, so here are some pictures of the process).

I had a fitting of my toille on Tuesday with my model and had a few alterations to make to the pattern. After making them, it didn't take too long to sew the dress from the final gold/white brocade. Here, my friend tried it on for me so I could check the sewing and proportions and so i could have a picture of it before I dyed it:

Me, immersing the dress in a bath of fuchsia dye. Nothing more to be said. Other than the fact that this was pretty terrifying.


At this point, I took out the trash, washed all the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, watched this week's episode of So You Think You Can Dance online (my favorite show ever...not that that should surprise anyone)...
...and what happened next is to be revealed later.

Final Fitting

A few sleepless days have gone by since our final fitting and I never thought I could get so much done in so little time. Turns out...when you give up on most of your sleep and a good amount of your meals, there are way more hours in the day (for fashion's sake, right)? Anyways, as you can see...I FINALLY got to shorten the sequins under the skirt to the length I wanted (in case I hadn't shared here in bloggerville, I sewed the sequins REALLY long so we could decide on the length later and it really bothered me to look at it so long).
Everything is coming along well. Now I'm just in search of the perfect shoes. Suggestions are more than welcome. heels.
Much more to come. And only 4 days until the final presentation.

Another Post About my Jacket...

Today I realized how much it changes EVERYTHING to see your garment on a real person (as opposed to a mannequin, a hanger, yourself, in pieces, in the sewing machine, under an iron, etc, etc). You get the point. In any case, it was like a breath of fresh air to see it with actual arms inside and to be able to step back and understand what works and what doesn't. Thanks, Odel!

blah blah blahg...

So here's the story of my second outfit...(is it just me or does any one else have an automatic reflex when they hear "so here's the story" to start rapping the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme"?). In any case, after our mid-semester critiques, when we sat with our advisers and chose which outfit we're going to sew, the outfit I most wanted to make was this dress:This particular course, however, other than requiring us to blog our entire process, also requires that we create a complete look...more of an outfit. And my advisers and I agreed that this dress is a little bit too basic. And so...we decided on the outfit I've been working on for the last month and a half (ya know...the many, many sequins)...No, seriously...it's kind of hard to miss. We did, however, agree that if I could manage to get everything done with enough time to spare, I could try to make the dress. So tomorrow is our final fitting (to make sure everything sits right, and to measure hems and finishes) and I managed to make a toille of the dress to fit tomorrow. If everything fits alright, I'll have enough time between the fitting and the presentation to make the dress (and of course, dye it). Here's my progress:Here's me! The idea with this dress is that I really related to my previous post "Because Size Does Matter" and I changed a lot of the proportions of a regular dress. The waistline dropped to the hips, the armhole grew, the shoulder dropped, the neckline widened and somehow the dress (at least on me) still looks wearable.

Under the dress, there is another, thinner dress that is seen in the places where I cut out the shapes from the brocade. The part of the neckline that is seen, I draped many small folds.
Tomorrow I'll see both looks on the models and hopefully everything will work out! I'll definitely be sure to take pictures and post them soon!

A Post About my Jacket

I mean, the title pretty much says it all so there's not a whole lot more to add. I seam (on-purpose-typo...get it?) to have made quick progress on both my skirts and my top which left me nothing but time to procrastinate working on this scary, scary jacket. All in all (not including the 3 toilles and many, many changes I made to the pattern), from the moment I had the final pattern...It's taken me two and a half weeks to cut, embroider, and sew the jacket (and we're still talking about a jacket without lining)!!!


I must say, I had myself pretty convinced that after I had all these sequins sewn (one at a time), the sewing would be cake! Oh man was I wrong! I basically had to sew a completely tailored jacket from silk chiffon. I'm not gonna lie....I have a few rips and tears (and tears in the other sense) here and there, but I've found that sometimes it's better to just hang up the jacket...stop sewing, stop ironing and either hope no one will notice or if need be, cover up all the problem areas with some extra sequins. : )
So this is wear (another on-purpose-typo...words are fun) we are now! The jacket demands some serious ironing, but that's probably been my biggest struggle in this entire project. For those of you who understand fabrics, you know that synthetic jacquard and silk chiffon iron very differently...so naturally, when ironing them one on top of the other, I had some trouble. For now, I'm leaving it alone and hoping that my technical adviser can...well...advise in this area.
Coming up next on Las Meninas...A Post about my second Outfit! (That's right, it's already in the works...SURPRISE! you know you don't want to miss this!)
Happy weekend to all...

Sequins!!!!

Mini Fashionistas

A friend of mine just sent me this adorable article after reading my blog....

(הכתבה בעברית לכל השנקריסתים בקהל)

ENJOY! : )

Raw Edges...

So things are starting (slowly, but surely) to come together.
For now, i have 3 out of 4 pieces sewn...without belts, facings, and finishes, of course.

Yesterday, I managed to perfect the edges of the shirt...which are done with an overlock machine in BRIGHT PINK! I had to mess around with the size of the stitch and practice on a LOT of scraps since every mistake is visible! I love the way it came out....Now I just have to take on the collar...

And last, but most certainly not least....I spent a full day cutting the jacket with the chiffon! The next few days are dedicated to sitting and sewing LOADS of sequins (and perhaps watching some trashy television in the process....what can i say? I'm in a Kardashian phase).


Please note: The Red Bull might as well be sewn into the jacket...End of semester diet for fashion design students at Shenkar: Red Bull and Coffee....It's possibly that we're killing ourselves, but at least we look good doing it.

More to come!

Fit for a princess

The last few weeks, I've been busy sewing multiple "drafts" of all of my garments and fitting them on a model. Here are some pictures of the first fitting (from several weeks ago)...since then, There have been 3 more skirts and 2 more jackets all in raw materials... It takes time to get the right proportions and fit, but as of this week, I'm good to go!

I've already sewn parts here and there of the final pieces (from the real fabrics) and I'll be sure to load pictures in the next few days....
The skirt was kind of a disaster the first time around, which is kind of funny because I always think my patterns are really simple...but now I know that sometimes the most simple garments are the hardest to fit! After fixing the pattern and sewing a few more skirts with the changes, I managed to get a silhouette that I really love and it looked great on her! (I'll post those pics soon)!



So anyways, I know these pictures are a hot mess, but I promise, I've already made great strides in improving the overall look and fit!

Behind the Seams...

So it's been a while since my last post.... but don't you fret, Project: Las Meninas is well at work.

My mid-term presentation went really well and aside from needing to focus in on my customer profile and some other minor details, my collection overall got good feedback.

For now...I'm working hard on sewing my toille for the outfit I've chosen to carry out.
Here she is:

Tomorrow I have my first fitting with a model...So after some long nights, battling with myself over why I chose to sew an entire jacket from chiffon (explanation to follow)....here's what we have so far.At this stage, everything is sewn without finishes and from raw fabrics....in order to check sillouhettes, lengths, proportions, and the like. I can already see that I want the skirt a bit shorter and the jacket longer, but I'm waiting to see everything on a model (with actual legs) before I make any changes.

This is the textile I've decided on for the jacket. The fabric is a barbie pink brocade (whoever created it is a genius in my eyes)...It is, however, INCREDIBLY gaudy...so I decided to tone it down by adding a mask of very transperent chiffon. I'm hand embroidering sequins all over the jacket and in certain places I'll sew them on top of the chiffon.
Because chiffon is such a tricky fabric to work with, I felt like I needed to practice, so i sewed the entire toille with an additional layer of chiffon over the muslin.
And when by some miracle I managed to actually do that, it was around 1 am Thursday morning at Shenkar, and this is what my workspace looked like (it's actually not nearly as bad as it had the potential to be).


All in all...sorry for the brief hiatus, but as you can see, it wasn't for nothing. I'll post pictures later this week of the fitting.

Peace, Love, and Meninas!