December Dress-Up: Submission

Wow! a whole year of dresses... yes, I'm squeaking the last few in just under the wire and was relieved to find that I had not missed any other months along the way as I anxiously scrolled through my year of posts.

So... the challenge for this month was WINGS! I left the interpretation up to the individual - angel, faerie, butterfly...anything.

As always, I have a few process pictures for you, but the piece came together really quickly and I'm especially pleased with the overall ethereal nature.

Step one... must use organza fabric... somehow!

I made tiny wired wings with long stems first and sewed filmy organza to the edges with my favorite "see-through" thread.

Tip: after struggling with the first couple of wings, trying to sew fabric cut to size with a quarter inch allowance, I would recommend attaching a large piece and then just trimming away the excess!

Here are a few completed wings standing up in a glass.  I left the "stems" long because I had no idea what the dress was going to be made from. (I was that obsessed with the wing part of the project).

Since this was done a few days ago PRIOR to my annual studio "muck-out", there were lots of materials lying all over the place.  I cut a generic shift-style shape out of some clear plastic packaging and then laid it over the beautiful decorative motifs printed on my new Hammerpress 2012 calendar. (gift from the lovely daughteress).  As I reached for a sharpie to trace some of the filigree on to the dress, she became extremely alarmed that I was going to cut up the calendar for decoration on the dress. Once we got that all sorted out and everyone was calm again, I traced some curlicues and then freehanded the bee in the center.

To mask the wing stem and hefty glue attachment on the back, I drew some fake shirring on the front.

Here are some pickies.

It was difficult to photograph this piece since it is neither two nor three dimensional and see-through to boot.  For the photo above, I wedged it in a crack in the table...

Here is a close-up of the decorations... best to not look too closely- they look much better from afar!

Here it is next to the beautiful letterpress calendar.

Here's a shot of the back so you can see where I attached the wings.

And finally, a side view so you can see how slight it is.

I have really enjoyed this year long project started by the Lovely Angela at SewLoquacious.

I have not heard back from any of my "millions" of followers whether you would like to do the same project again or another topic on a monthly basis.  I would love to host again, but the last few months has been very quiet here at the Dress-up Challenge 2011 hosting headquarters and I don't know where you all went!

Please contact me if you'd like to resume or start another project.

I also posted November's submission this morning... take a look!

In the mean time, I'll be challenging myself to a rendering a day on my new "Dress-a-Day" page on this blog.  Check back often! 

Best wishes for the new year

Liza