I’m so close to being able to post again.  The bridal gown is done tomorrow.  What’s that you ask?  Yes, in fact, I am behind.  Would I be me without being behind on any given project?  Why, yes, in fact, I am working on that — see below.

I pulled Violet Crown from MQX and did not enter it in MQS.  I was not going to be happy with the outcome and I decided I would rather put myself a year behind schedule with wearables than have my first entry into both shows be something I wasn’t happy with or proud of.  Right now, I’m fine with the quilting and fine with the embroidery.  I’m even fine with the colors.  There’s something about the silhouette that’s bugging me.  Maybe I’ve been thinking long gowns for too long but it’s not feeling right to me with the shorter rhumba design.  I’m going to finish out the muslin in black and play with a longer “flouce” before I go any further with it.  I will do daily updates when I start in on that sometime later next week.

I hope that my bride will let me post pictures of her dress.  If you don’t know, I had a customer who was unhappy that I posted a picture of her quilt a few years ago.  I had to remove the post.  It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t want it up.  I also didn’t expect that my blog would be a big deal to her.  I actually didn’t know she read it.  I apologized profusely and felt horrid.  So, I don’t post about customer projects without permission and I try to wait until they’re done.  But I feel comfortable telling y’all a cool thing we’re doing with this one.  We took the zipper out of the back of this dress and are putting in a corset back.  Since I couldn’t find anything pre-made to insert, I had to make the tubes and loops and such myself.  I hope to post a tutorial on how I did it for the benefit of everyone who ever tries this.  I couldn’t find one myself and had to cobble together other instructions and use a little gorilla glue (j/k Honey!)

Back to beading.  Another thing I hope I get to show you guys.  It’s been a few days of work but I’m having fun with it.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a custom clothing item.  I haven’t shared anything up to this point, because it’s not quilty or wearable art for competition.  Thing is, I realized that these *are* wearable art.  Just because they’re not in a show doesn’t mean they aren’t art.  So, without further ado…

This is a peacock-tail-like train made from two saris that my customer ordered from Bangalore.  She had this whole vision in her head — I just executed it.  I am so excited about how it came out.  I used two layers of Timtex for the waistband and it was perfect!  I think I’m going to order a whole bolt of the stuff to use in other outfits.  The back is four tiers total, if you count the shaped peplum.  I have to apologize for the pictures.  They’re not the best, since I didn’t think about posting them online until after the fact.  What does everyone think?