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 those of you not from around here, you probably have never heard Austin called The City of the Violet Crown.  O. Henry was the first to put that in writing, actually.  Austin and Rome, apparently.  There’s this beautiful atmospheric effect that happens at sunset, mostly in the late summer, where the city looks like it’s glowing violet along the horizon.

Gorgeous, no?  And with my friend Marcia Kaylackie winning the Violet Crown Award this year, I’ve had the phrase on the brain.  It sounded so beautiful and I just adore violets.  I was originally going to make my opera gown as Violet Crown but changed my mind when I saw this vintage pattern on Out of the Ashes

I scanned the line drawings from the instructions and have been doodling different ideas for a few days now.  Cause, cataloging patterns is kinda boring and a girl’s gotta take a break now and then, right?  It’s been hard for me to figure out how to make the quilting design work with both the real Violet Crown and what people are going to see if they don’t know and only hear “crown” in the title.  This is where I am right now:

Ignore the bows and the trim.  I don’t know yet whether I want to do the button placket down the front or not.  It may be too much visually or it may really need the addition.  The ruffle at the bottom with have an overlay of longarm lace shot with irridescent threads to make it look like the lights of the city in the picture above.  The overall dress will probably be a blue-purple but I haven’t found the right color just yet.  Anyone have any thoughts on lining?  I’m leaning towards a lighter violet or a cereulean blue but I would love to hear some ideas and opinions.