To be a bit cliché, this shoemaker is a professional Web Developer and her child is this blog, but it was past time to launch what I have of a new design. All the content is still here, everything else is a work in progress (kind of like most of my sewing projects)!
In the month’s span where I haven’t put my Regency outfit on for photos, it’s spent time stuffed in a bag on the couch, thrown on my sewing room floor, and then finally hanging on the wall mocking me about staying at the office so late recently. (I found the wool is rather forgiving with wrinkles, but the cotton petticoat and ramie chemise are a mess.)
While I still claim that I will get photos, just as soon as Carl and I can coordinate time at home together during non-raining daylight, I realized that I should figure out a storage solution for keeping the gown and accoutrements together.
I’ve mentioned before that when I do digital mockups of my quilts or play with designs before quilting, I do so in Adobe Illustrator. I have nothing against EQ or any other quilt software, it’s just that I don’t actually have that software; I do have Illustrator (albeit an older version from when I was in college).
I’ve been using Illustrator for just shy of a decade, so it is absolutely shameful that I didn’t know how to draw a quarter-circle until a few months ago. So, for anyone else in that boat (I know some of you use Illustrator too), I posted a quick tutorial on it over at my Web dev blog on rachaelarnold.com. (Once upon a time I had a grand ideas of having a few different blogs. I even updated them all. These days, I pretty much stick to this one here, but on rare occasions I update the one on Web development, too.)
I wish I’d learned about this before our trip to MO, because we could have swung through Chicago, but for those of you who can get to Chicago before April 16, 2012, there is a fabulous exhibition of couture fashion by Charles James at the Chicago History Museum.
Now, while I love looking at designer clothing, gowns alone won’t usually inspire me to want to trek halfway across the country for an exhibit, but this is more than just a show of his designs. The curating team used advanced imaging techniques and intense study of the construction of three iconic dresses in order to show visitors how the gowns are structured—and James’ designs are often very complex in structure. There are also touchable displays—the team painstakingly created prototypes of different aspects of the construction.
