First Cutter's Mutters Fail

I hope to bring you other local fashion/costume related fails in the future. To start this ongoing post we have a lovely business woman i encountered at the bus stop. A lady always knows what cut of clothing flatters her the most. 

Million Dollar Coffee Table Book Idea - Things You Find on Cincinnati Streets

So since I moved here to the wonderful Cincinnati, I have discovered a very exciting trend. Somehow, people lose the most amazing, seemingly unloseable things right on the street. Who knows how it happens - it would seem that unless there was some oncoming natural disaster, a 100 foot tall title wave for example, there are certain things you would notice falling from your person and would stop to recover. 

My favorite street corner keepsake is the all too common full length of Track Hair. The beauty you see to your right is a fine example found against a concrete wall. The almost purposeful arrangement is kind of striking - the artistically placed cigarette butt, the weed growing like a Pheonix from the fallen weave. It's a beautiful thing. 

Now the fun part - how did this unsuspecting piece of 100% Yak hair end up lying forlorn and alone on the street? Was there a drunken brawl between spurned lovers? Perhaps an angry child upset over not getting that Bratz doll she'd been asking about thought she'd teach her momma a lesson. Or perhaps, maybe most amazing an idea of all, some woman, after seeing her reflection in a passing city bus window says, "Oh no, I am looking straight tore up," proceeds to rip out her glued in track, and being the busy gal that she is, has no choice but to leave it to slowly biodegrade on a street corner. 

The next time you pass a pile of seemingly useless trash on the street, stop to wonder where it came from, how it got there, and where its going. Maybe next time i'll post one of the dozen condom photos we've captured. 

already - cuz i can - patterning for the plus size performer

this process of plus size pattern drafting has been rattling around in my brain for QUITE a while. my mother is a big, beautiful lady, and many a performer you come across is also, to quote the original ricky lake tracey turnblad, pleasantly plump or chunky. how do we make these women look there best? 

you cant use the standard flat patterning for fashion design cause the proportion gets all screwy and terrible. you end up with a dart intake of like 5 inches with a length of like 2 inches. hmm... those measurements sounds awfully familiar, but thats for the other blog. and while i think draping is the most tried and true method, what happens when you don't have the time or resources? are there no drafting systems for plus size fashions? i had a brief discussion with a woman presenting pattern drafting software at USITT, hers and her companys name escapes me, but she shared with me that the way her patterns are perfected is by relying not on proportion, but on exact measurements. hmm... i've never really tried drafting from scratch like that before, but i feel that in that exploration lies a great discovery.. hehe. 

this bodice/jacket from CCM's production of Barber of Seville was draped and flat patterned to hell, and fit very well in the end i think. thank goodness for dress forms and women who dont mine a little steel boning ;-) thats what she said. 

numero uno

someone put this little idea into my head a couple of weeks ago, and i've been unable to get rid of it! somehow, im hoping that i can keep this up for a bit. im going to be posting images of things im working on - maybe a few thoughts or questions - and hopefully we can just have a good time. 

an excercise in bias draping - i recently made two bias cut evening gowns for the opera Alcina. thanks to a helpful lesson from fellow draper lara this summer at SFO i had a few tricks up my sleeve. i think it was pretty successful. not quite sure what i would do differently - perhaps try some of the top stitching of seams that can be found in period research. if it aint broke - dont fix it, right? oh, and i'd prolly try to not use the poly - crepe backed satin - yeah.