SAMPLE PARTY

I'm going to be selling a ton of samples at Puces Pop this weekend. Most of these are one-offs, many I no longer have patterns for - that means if you see something you like you should snap it up. Sorry for the crummy photos - I am incapable of photographing dark clothing it turns out.

I made this linen dress for my trip to Paris with my sister a couple years ago. I think I wore it once, the day we went shopping at Printemps, and it's been sitting on my sample shelf since.




Aysmmetrical draped top in silk habotai.


Hand-dyed crinkle linen scarf.

Another sample dress I made for myself, intended to rework, and rediscovered two years later.

Come visit this weekend!

Puces Pop
September 22nd-23rd, 2012
at St-Michel Church, 105 Saint-Viateur West
Opening Hours: 11am-6pm 

CHANGE OF SCENERY

I took a little break from Fall design early this week to play around with some fun(er) projects. I needed a rest from tedious drafting and sampling and decided to make! creative! work! immediately!
I plan to take some better photos this weekend, but for now here's a glimpse of my latest. I hope to add a number of hand-dyed linen scarves and Springy leather pouches to the shop next week - time to add a little colour & pattern to my life.

STARRY HEAVENS

The hand-dyed and stitched star chart my sister made me for christmas. I finally had a chance to put it up in the studio this week, it sits with my other treasures above my cutting table. Can you find Ursa Minor?

SAGE CIRCLES

I'm the kindof person who takes forever to finish a project, and usually it's just the very last step in the process that trips me up. I'm that girl who buys all the materials to make jam but somehow never gets around to purchasing the jars. I'll cut plant clippings for friends that sit in cups of water for years awaiting soil. I'll sew an entire shirt for myself and fail to add buttonholes for 6 months. I have two quilt projects on the go which likely won't see completion soon, unless I'm suddenly bedridden for the next half-year. I am bad, OK?

I am also very bad at getting-it-together in a timely fashion to take, edit & post photos of items I've made. Ditto for adding new items to my shop. And though I'm trying to change this, little by little, taking the final step and making things available to the public is not one of my personal strengths.

Today, though, I am breaking the cycle and adding a new dress to my shop. The result of work I did months ago, my hand-dyed, tie front dress is now up on Etsy. This piece is made from a lovely woven linen/rayon blend and hand tie-dyed a beautiful minty-sage green. It is available in sizes S, M & L, just one of each. For more information visit *here*, and for more photos see below.

Also, thanks for all your lovely comments about the new line, as well as some nice shout-outs on the interwebs: Display Magazine & Anja. xoxo, it's much appreciated.

IKAT

A few last shots from the Textile Museum of Canada, these are from the Central Asian ikat exhibit, Bukhara. Some beautiful examples of ikat-weave and embroidered silk robes, hangings and coverlets from a fascinating place and time.

Ikat weaving was something I always wanted to try in school when I had easy access to a loom, alas it's another of those projects I never got around to. The process of these fabrics is so interesting, time consuming. One would truly have to plan in advance (never my strong suit) or else be content allowing happy accidents to happen.

Maybe some day again I'll have a loom and the space and time to use it?? One can dream.....

DYEING PART II

I've struggled so much in finding a black dye that actually dyes black. So far I've had blacks that dye blue, blacks that dye green and blacks that dye purple. Does no one make an actual honest-to-god black dye???

Anyway, I switched gears this weekend and I think I've found a solution to my black dye problem. I've been rushing like a madwoman all week trying to get some samples finished and sent out to NY for a magazine shoot, so you can imagine my excitement when this final piece actually worked out the way I wanted. As usual, I used a bound resist technique on a pattern I'm working on for Spring 2012. I'm digging the kindof decayed flapper vibe this piece has. Wanna see a shot of the back?

How about the whole front?

A detail shot?

Wanna see it on a human body? (surprise, it's me, I have no head)

In action?

Why not put a belt on it?

Dresses are fun. You can wear them.

POUR LA VICTOIRE

I'm looking forward to a multi-week whirlwind of family visits starting with my Mom's arrival later this afternoon. I can't wait to show her around our new home and neighborhood and allow myself to feel like a tourist in my own city. I hope to check out the botanical gardens, which I've never done, and spend some time at Jean Talon and in Old Montreal, where I love to visit. Hopefully we can just relax and walk and cook and eat, my ideal life.

In anticipation of family time, I've been working all week at getting a package together for my favorite Ottawa boutique, Victoire. It will be done and sent next week and I've just finished some dresses for them which I made up in hand-dyed linen. I think they're quite lovely and I wish that I had just a little extra fabric to make one for myself - oh the plight of the designer.

When that's done I'm planning on taking an indefinite sabbatical and closing my Etsy shop for a few weeks so I can devote my full attention to the aspects of my business which ultimately get pushed aside in favor of day-to-day tasks. This means that if you want anything before then, please let me know. I'll be going on vacation as early as May first and for sure by the 13th. And just a reminder to anyone who may not know, you still have three days to take advantage of 15% off everything in my shop with the code: anemonefriends

Ok, back to work, I hope everyone has a lovely weekend and maybe that sun will finally shine as both the season and the weatherman have promised. xo.

DYEING PART I

My Mom taught us how to tie dye when we were pretty little. She taught us a lot of things: how to dye, how to make paper, how to sew and cook and grow things in the earth. How to draw and invent ways to entertain ourselves. How to make whatever we wanted from the abundance of raw materials around us. Looking back at this early education it's no wonder I've ended up doing what I do, I've been doing it since I was a child.

I love dyeing. I love just plunging in and waiting and wishing and not knowing the results until the grand unveiling at the very end of the process. I love the unique irregularities that come with dyeing something by hand. I like creating my own patterns and then cutting them up and reconfiguring them in new ways.

This is the first bit of dyeing I did yesterday. I'll finish it with an over-dye in pale grey to keep things subtle - no need to look like we're off the the North Country Fair. And then tomorrow, maybe, I'll cut it all up and begin to sew.

WATER TOPS NOW ONLINE

I just added two of the hand-dyed silk 'Water Tops' I made to my Etsy store, one pink one and one blue. By all means head over to check them out!

Now I need to make one that I can keep for myself....next up? black dye!

DYE JOB

My first two years of university were spent in the textile/fibre arts program at ACAD and that's where I learned everything I know about dying (the fabric kind, not the no-living kind). It's probably also the last time I dyed any fabric until this week, which is weird cause I LOVE dying.

I'm so happy with how these pieces turned out, I hardly want to sell them. I used a shibori technique I learned in school on a habotai silk. The process is a lot of work and destroys my fingers but I totally think the results are worth it. The pattern is a super loose tank top I made myself last winter and which I love to wear thrown over black skinnies. The pink top is double dyed and it came out that perfect shade of pale peach that puts roses in your cheeks, which is good, I was worried it might turn out orange. The blue tank is my favorite though, I'm finding it hard to let it out of my sight.

Now I just want to dye everything.

Here's the before shot:

And during:

And the great reveal:

Though it pains me a little, I'll have four of each for sale at Smart Design Mart and will be putting them in my Etsy shop early next week. I know I'll be making more of these soon.