It's an order from my shop from my favorite kind of customer. The kind that says "Here! I kinda want it to look like this, but go crazy! Do what you want to do!" I truly love these opportunities and try hard never to disappoint. We settled on a rainbow ruffle dress/top and a butterfly and mushroom applique, and I could do the applique's however I wanted! Yay!!
My customer was gracious and wonderful, and let me keep the dress much longer than I had anticipated needing to keep it. I just couldn't get it right, it was almost "there" so many times, and then I knew in my heart it wasn't right, and I'd start over. I actually got into a week or so when I had the sewing equivalent of writers block! I was stuck and I had other orders and projects that needed doing and I just couldn't get past this dress!
Then it happened. Magic. I knew instantly what I was going to do.
It all started with a completely different dress. I had pushed through the "sewing block" and created for a stocking at the Make it Canadian, Eh Congo that I participate in.
See that tree? That's when the spark lit.
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| Enchanted Reunion Dress |
I've had that particular spark light up one time before. In my first year of university I took an intro art class. Very intro, think like "art for dummies". The instructor was amazing. Picture a ginger haired Dumbledor with a penchant for wearing dashiki's and teeny little round John Lennon glasses. Nothing but praise and the perfect amount of direction came from him.
In the beginning we struggled as a class to get what we were seeing to translate to the paper. Like our eyes and our heads and our hands couldn't make it all come together.
Our prof kept telling us to push through, keep going, just keep drawing and one day, one moment, you head and your hand with make the connection and it will be like magic! Just keep trudging on, the more you do, the better it will be, and it will be worth it.
I distinctly remember the day. It was almost exactly this time of year, mid fall maybe 6 or 7 weeks into the semester. We where all siting around a grouping of pumpkins, drawing. Drawing the quick, rough sketches to prepare for our final submissions.
And then the giggles started. A tiny delighted giggle from behind an easel in the far corner. Another right beside me. Another, and another and then finally I realized what was going on and I was giggling too. Pure joy as my hand and my head finally made the connection.
Finally what was being put down on the paper looked exactly like what my head wanted it to. We all hit our stride in the same session, it really was magic.
This dress gave me the same shiver, the same delighted giggle, exactly like my pumpkin drawing.
I really had to work to get it there. I knew what I wanted it to look like in my head, I knew how I wanted it to feel, but I hadn't quite come to the perfect idea, the perfect design and technique to make it be as good as it was in my mind. But when it clicked - magic!
And that is why there is a pumpkin instead of a mushroom, as we had previously agreed on. The pumpkin pays a little homage to the day my hand and my head finally made the connection way back in that art class a million years ago. And the second moth, well, once I got going, I didn't want to stop.
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| Original pumpkin art, circa 1999, hanging in my bedroom. |
I'm so enamoured of these pictures taken by the incredibly talented Melanie Lapp of Melanie Lapp Photography. She's an amazing photographer and has a knack for bring out the best in people. You can't help but be happy around her, she's just that awesome! She took our family photos this year too, and I hope I can twist her arm into photographing some more of my dresses in the future ;)
