Pieces

I'm making two little baptismal gowns for two precious children, one in California and one in Texas; they're the same size, and one is in ivory and the other in white, in soft tissue linen. These are such fun! (You can see what the finished product will look like here.)

Texture

I'll be showing a few of my Laurel & Fife gowns as well as several Triggi Designs pieces this Friday and Saturday at the Clothesline Art Show at the St. Elmo Fire Hall. The work I'll be displaying will showcase the use of remnants and scraps as embellishment - one of my favorite things to do, as I use so many lovely fabrics and hate to let the last bits go until I've used them up beautifully!

Petals in various shades of coffee-dyed hemp/cotton weave, on a background of tissue linen...
all leftovers from bridal and baptismal gowns I've made this summer.

Come out Friday night for the artists' reception (with refreshments...hmmm....what shall I make?) or Saturday to view the beautiful work of several local artists and browse for possible holiday gifts or items for your home. Despite the "Clothesline" name, this is mainly an art show, and most of the work represented isn't clothing or crafts. I'd love to see you there!

-Bekah

Polished Ivory

And they're finally here - the lovely photos from The Studio B Photography of my hemp/cotton Ivory Wicket Gown at a recent style shoot by Fine & Fleurie! It is such a privilege to have joined with these talented women for so much collective prettiness =).

Seriously, I want to go back in time to 1986 or so and tell that little girl, drawing floor plans and making clothes for her paper dolls (because her mother wisely wouldn't buy her the uncreative preprinted ones), about the real patterns she'd make and real dolls she was going to get to dress up one day!

At the Fire Hall

My "booth" from last Saturday's Spring Market, just before opening. I had a great day, lots of fun talking with people, including the other vendors - no two had the same kind of wares. Looks like it's going to become a regular happening every month or two!

Beautiful Age

My great-grandmother Jean Olive passed away in 2002. She was one hundred and two years old, and had battled cancer (skin and colon) for decades. Even with a body so ravaged, she had a humorous glint in her eyes and was tall and beautiful. I remember asking her a couple of years before she died if she felt as though she were the whole world's big sister - older than almost everyone, still in possession of a very good mind and pretty good senses - and she just laughed at my question. "No," she answered, "But I really am enjoying seeing my great-grandchildren as adults. Not everyone gets to see that."

The dress, before I began dismantling it. A strong breath could reduce sections
of it to powder, but the lace border is still quite strong.

I've been cutting up and framing pieces of an ancient wedding gown that was given to me, and from what I can deduce, it was likely made before my great-grandmother was born. I keep wondering about the woman - or women - who wore it, and what their lives were before and after the day that they lived in this gown.

Lovely stuff. It's heavy and rich still.

Thinking about age and use and what it does to beauty - how it can deepen it even as it erases it - always reminds me of one little moment in the middle of Orwell's 1984.

Julia had come across to his side; together they gazed down with a sort of fascination at the sturdy figure below. As he looked at the woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching up for the line, her powerful mare-like buttocks protruded, it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain like an over-ripe turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so, and after all, he thought, why not? The solid, contourless body, like a block of granite, and the rasping red skin, bore the same relation to the body of a girl as the rose-hip to the rose. Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower?

'She's beautiful,' he murmured.

'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia.

'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.

He held Julia's supple waist easily encircled by his arm. From the hip to the knee her flank was against his. Out of their bodies no child would ever come. That was the one thing they could never do. Only by word of mouth, from mind to mind, could they pass on the secret. The woman down there had no mind, she had only strong arms, a warm heart, and a fertile belly. He wondered how many children she had given birth to. It might easily be fifteen. She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wild-rose beauty and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, darning, cooking, sweeping, polishing, mending, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty unbroken years. At the end of it she was still singing. 

I have nothing more to add to that, only, that at the end of whatever I am used for in this life, I want to be still singing.

Sneak Peek for the St. Elmo Spring Market Today!

I'm just about to head over to the St. Elmo Spring Market at the renovated fire hall. My roommate helped me set up my corner and we'll be ready to roll at 10 am when the doors open. I'm debuting several items that I'm very excited about (including a Frank Lloyd Wright dress that I've had on the back burner for FOREVAH), some saucy new big pillows, and a couple of little baby girl dresses, like this one. We'd love to see you there today - the market goes from 10 am to 6 pm and there are all kinds of other amazing vendors (and free lemonade...and free wine and music in the afternoon.)

Getaway Skirt

Sometimes, fabrics themselves inspire certain designs. I once ordered a satin to use for a skirt - I got a bolt of it, because it was such a good deal, but found that it wasn't exactly the stuff I needed for that particular order. It is a lovely fabric, however, and when I paired it with another impulse buy (some really great medallion lace I found), this is what came out of it!

Isn't it pretty? The combination begged for something fairly simple, but not overly traditional. I played around with it for a bit and settled on a straight skirt with a surprising twist; a flat-pleated high waist, bound with a triple-wound grosgrain ribbon and finished with a very soft ruffle formed by the pleats just spilling over the top.

You can see more photos at the Getaway Skirt listing in my Etsy shop. Thanks so much to Emily at Red Leaf Photography for featuring this skirt in a fantastic giveaway (you can still enter up until midnight tonight - February 28th - go check it out!)

Royal Blue

I've long been fascinated by peacocks (but then, who hasn't?). Near our church in rural South Carolina, where I grew up, a family friend kept a gigantic concrete swimming pool open during the summer. We'd go swim, and the peacocks in the surrounding woods cried their weird cries.

Freehand embroidery in a pretty nifty frame I came across (free with purchase - click here to check it out)

Peacocks are regal, in the way they strut around, but it's really their colors that make them seem so rich. I came across some iridescent floss that almost glows in the deep colors, and rather than going with the full palette for this little kingly fellow, I focused on the royal blue.

A Fox Went Out on a Friday Night

Virgil Fox in bright blue linen

I never set out to do stuffed animals - but necessity begets creativity, and I am in the phase of life where my friends are having children. Enter the baby shower.

More photos and full description ~>

Stained Glass on Linen

Another Frank Lloyd Wright embroidery, with even more vibrant floss this time, and on oatmeal-colored linen. I love sewing these little jewels!

This item for sale in my Etsy shop.

Sharing is for People Who Like To Share

And these are for the people who prefer to keep things clear. =)

Other views and zoom available at the listing in my Etsy shop.

Anemone Dress

This is a prototype pattern that I developed while creating a birthday party dress for a customer recently. She ended up going with a modified design, with a slightly longer waist and a narrower skirt, but I fell in love with this little round-waisted, party-skirt dress!

More photos and full description ~>

Frank Lloyd Wright

A tiny cross-stitch of my own design, copying a stained glass window by Frank Lloyd Wright. I used these great densely-colored glossy flosses that look almost as if they glow like the glass they mimic.

This item is currently for sale on my Etsy site.