Sarah's techno wedding dress

Another wedding dress for a dear friend from back in the day! I met Sarah and Jeff their freshman year of college when living in the dorms at Webster University in St Louis MO and they have since moved to Seattle. After about a year of looking for wedding dresses Sarah was confident that she couldn't find the dress she wanted within her budget. Her ideal dress was modern, sexy and sparkly without being clingy, shiny or traditional AND it has to look good on her very petite frame.

Sarah and I met up and went over her collection of pictures, both from magazines and designers and of her in the dresses she had tried in stores. First I focused on finding the right bridal fabrics but found them all to be too traditional and a little expensive for the budget. A trip to Britex in San Francisco gave me some phenomenal cotton and synthetic blends with a subtle tone on tone sparkle that gives a very modern techno feel in a bridal color palate at a price point we could work with. It was the first time I had ever bought the fabric without the client seeing it but I was SO sure this was it I took the risk after emailing photos. Fortunately Sarah loved the fabrics I found and we nailed down a design. Here are the fabrics:

NW Textile show

Last week in Portland we had the NW Textile Show at the Portland convention center. I have to say that I was totally amazed! Most of it was way over our heads bling crazy Addidas and Nike oriented stuff, but the materials were amazing and some of the vendors had low or no minimums on their stock materials. There were crazy hologram materials for shoe insets, amazing webbings and laces, 3D laminated printing technology AND the whole reason we went, Schoeller Fabrics.

Schoeller Fabrics is the cutting edge in fabric technology, making textiles for gear, shoes, equestrian and what we're particularly interested in, stylish rain gear. I dream of a day when I can wear a cure retro looking jacket in a bitter winter rain and keep warm and dry. The samples are on their way to us and the designs are flying for the "Cycling Jacket" that all my guy friends keep requesting. What we've found is a wool stretch blend, laminated with a waterproof layer that stretches too! Drop in a cozy bamboo, wool, silk knit or fleece lining and oohhhh boy! Men's, Women's and Children's lightweight waterproof wool with classic styling.

Drop me a line with thoughts and ideas on what you like most in your favorite clothes!

EM

Iggy's Wedding Dress

My good friend Iggy is getting married (http://erinandabraham.com) and she commissioned me to make her wedding ensemble. I'm really excited about this because it's not going to be your average gown! After looking over her scrap book of ideas we came up with a 5 piece outfit. The basic outfit is going to be a camisole, matador pants, corset and short sleeve bolero but then to top it off there is going to be a huge show girl bustle made from layers of silk taffeta and sparkle netting!

We're well under way with the project, I started by drafting a moulage from her measurements and then drafted a custom pattern for all of the pieces. We've had our first fitting and I have to say that I was totally spot on with the corset and bolero! I decided to go back to the drawing board on the camisole, I just didn't like where I had gone. The pants we're re-fitting in muslin to guarantee the sexiest pink satin matador pants we've ever seen. I worked up a little sample of the bustle to check the interaction between the corset, pants, bustle and jacket back and the shape is great! We both really liked the texture and the way the colors worked together.

Here is a sketch of what we're working on and a picture of her fabrics: