Long time no write…

When last I posted, I envisioned posting every month or so, keeping you all updated on my latest dress or two. What I didn’t know in August of 2008 was that I was at a pivotal time in my life.

My own daughter, who had recalled at World’s in April, and placed 11^th at the North American Championships in July, was injured during preparation for Nationals, and was in increasing pain. She was also preparing to leave home, and would soon be very busy with her new life as a college freshman. She had hoped to compete at Worlds again in 2009, but between a long recovery from her injury and the time constraints of her coursework, within a few months she knew that she would not be able to regain her conditioning to dance as well as she needed to be competitive at Worlds, so made the decision to retire.

My niece, “my” other dancer—she’s always been a small part mine as much as her mom’s—was also making the transition to college and retirement.

After 10 years of sweat, lifelong friendships, sweat, fun, pain, stress, failure and frustration, more sweat, joy and exultation, life lessons, and AMAZING success, we were no longer at class or competitions regularly.

In the meantime, knowing there would be fewer demands on my time due to dance, I took on more at my “day job”, moving from a per diem teaching position of a couple of days a week to become a more-than-half-time university professor.

Despite these changes, I knew I still wanted to be a dressmaker. I enjoy the creativity, working with dancers to bring to life their “perfect dress.” There is nothing like the look on a dancer’s face when you succeed! In these financially challenging times, I knew I also needed to keep this source of additional income to keep our paying-off-Worlds-and-college-tuition budget in the black. I continued to design and sew, working with my tailor, Marina, to bring these dreams to life.

Until January of 2009.

I knew that my friend and tailor, Marina, was going to have surgery to replace a heart valve in late December. She was calm and positive when we spoke about it a few days beforehand. I knew it was serious, but she had come through so many other health challenges, and was going to have her surgery in a well-respected hospital. I thought I’d visit her there after I returned from a family vacation, and that she’d be back in front of her sewing machine in several weeks, as she had been after her previous surgeries. I’m not sure she even told her family how dire her condition was.

As many of you know, Marina didn’t survive the surgery. In one fell swoop, I’d lost the highly trained expert half of my business, the one who could take my scattered parts and make them a functional whole, could look at a sketch and draft a pattern from it, who pulled my just-in-time act together in time so often.

But most of all, I’d lost a friend. And I couldn’t even fathom how her family would go on without her.

We all picked up the pieces as best we could, going through her cluttered shop layer by layer, laughing and crying at bits of memory told in scraps of fabric.

I knew I had to go on; I had dress orders. I took a deep breath, looked over her supplies and machines, and started to review all the things she’d taught me over the six years we’d worked together. I started the first dress when the embroidery machine was still at Marina’s, and with the help of Marina’s mom, who coached me through the embroidery with her few words of broken English and pantomime, and a dressmaker friend and angel named Diane Archer to assemble the dress, we got it done. It’s still one of my favorites.

With less time to work, and having to do so much on my own, my dressmaking career has slowed; I’ve only done a few dresses in the last year and a half. But I’ve learned so much, bringing together my own skill areas of color and design with the things Marina and her mom were able to teach me about embroidery and tailoring, intensive tailoring coaching from Diane, and of course, the wonderful folks at the Celtic Flame costumer’s message board.

I’ll be posting pictures and memories from those dresses, and more of my cherished Irish dance memories in the days to come—stay tuned!

Trish

Life of a dress

Here's a dress made early 2008 for a dancer at the beginning of her growth spurt. Here you can see that I'm able to use my embroidery digitizing software to print and color a quite accurate sketch of a planned dress, which helps me in designing the dress, and allows the customer to have a good idea of what the finished dress will look like before we begin.

As with all my dresses, I try to build in as much let out and let down room, both so that the dress can accomodate the owner's growth and for flexibility at resale. In this case, the dress as originally sewn had the bodice design extending right down to the waist seam. Here, my tailor Marina has taken the skirt off, opened up the back pleats and let down the bodice 1 1/2", and reassembled the dress so it will be long enough and sit down correctly on the dancer's hips to accomodate her changing height and shape. This dress still has an additional 1 1/2" to let down, and enough room in the pleats and bodice seams to let out the dropped waist another 2".

Off the rack dress

Here's a dress that I made as an off the rack dress using some new and some leftover fabrics and an embroidery motif from an older dress. It is a semi-custom dress, in that I posted it on Dance-Again with the parts embroidered but not actually cut out, and pinned to my dressmaker's dummy. This let me show the basic look of the dress, but at the same time allowed me to make the dress a custom fit for the dancer. As you can see, we added black underpanels instead of the tulle petticoat and a lace ruffle under the skirt front.

Off the rack dresses are nice in that I can use fabrics and ideas as I like but still adapt them to the customer's preferences, and the customer can see what the dress will look like right off the bat, instead of having to visualize the dress from sketches and swatches.

Using the awesome skills of my tailor, Marina Zhivetin, we can have customers communicate with her via emailed pictures and directions to measure for and adjust a muslin bodice. This allows a custom fit for long distance customers.

One more 2006 dress

Finally solved some technical difficulties to upload this great dress from 2006. I love the skirt design and the look of the colors on this dancer, which are created with overlays, especially a really lovely lavender and turquoise tiedye embroidered and sequinned chiffon. I used the edge detail of the white chiffon to edge the front panel, which was challenging, but was a great delicate finish to the skirt.

Oireachtas 07 page 4

Here are a couple of very happy campers with their World Qualifier medals. Another really great day!

The dancer in green is one of the world's biggest Harry Potter fans, so as I did for some of her previous dresses, I incorporated the snitch, which I used as her panel shape, and then added a modification of the deathly hallows on the body of the snitch.

Oireachtas 07 page 3

Another contrast in dancer styles. This blue dress was made for a young dancer who wanted a very ruffly, girly dress. The final look was created in large part by the dancer's mother, upon whom we have bestowed the title "The Bedazzler."

The dancer in the burgundy and gold dress wanted very sophisticated and clean lines, and we worked closely over several days to edit and simplify the design until we were all satisfied.

Incidentally, the champagne and blue dress was made by that dancer's mother, and is a really great dress, especially for her very first effort!

Oireachtas 07 page 2

Two more dresses done for the 07 Oireachtas. These girls chose pieces of jewelry as inspiration for their dress panel designs.