The Pianoforte Line is Coming Together

It seems like all I do any more is make seams. I certainly never write on my blog!  So I'm going to break form for a minute and write about my spiffy projects.

The fashion show, Raw Couture, is coming up on May 3, at 7:00 p.m. (location and ticket prices to be announced). Naturally I'd love all my friends to come and make up a huge cheering section for me.  So here are some sneak-peeks (not trailers, and not spoilers) into what I've been making.

You may remember that I chose Pianoforte as the theme for my designs. You may think that this is because I love the piano—which I do—but you'd be wrong. I chose that theme because time was passing swiftly and I had to come up with a theme and ten designs.  So I chose a dress I'd already designed for my first illustration class and let that dress choose my theme.

This is the dress—
which I really did design with the insides
of a grand piano in mind.

Of course that would never do; I had to tell my teacher and class that this was my inspiration:

Once I had decided to let that dress be my basis, more piano-themed dresses came to mind.  Here are a few rough sketches:

This one started out as a gown with a black and white pleated skirt and a ruched bodice (strong and soft). It's gone through a bit of change since September.

Oh my! Isn't she lovely?

And this is a short variation of the gown with
the black & white pleats. 

OK. Those are really rough sketches.

I spent all last semester trying to finalize the dresses, draft the patterns and sew and fit the mock-ups. This semester I'm working on the real thing.

Oooh! Look at me in my new sewing room!

And here's a couple really sneaky, sneak-peeks:

The insides of a bodice. Don't you just want to see how the outside looks?

Is this a skirt?  No. It is a sleeve! 

The marks I traced kept disappearing, so I had to hand-baste the lines in before I could pleat them.

And here they are, about 25 to 30 hours later, all pleated (but still not finished).

If you paid me for the hours I put into those sleeves you might also want to take out a sleeve-insurance policy. 

So there you have it, the very sneakiest of sneak peeks! Right now I've got most of two dresses done, and part of a third. While I worked I listened to my eight-hour music playlist about five times, "watched" all of my Jane Austen movies, plus The Young Victoria —about eighteen hours of movies, and developed a love for Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto (after listening to it about four times). I think a Lord of the Rings marathon is next on the list.

And now, fun as this is, I must get back to work.