Wednesday's Wanderings #37 - Eat, Drink and Be Married!

I came across this quote recently. 

"Sometimes I wish I could go back to the days when I was six

 and my biggest problem was what kind of dress to put on Barbie.”

I never played with Barbies because I was a tom boy growing up.  However, I appreciate the idea of the simplicity of youth.  My mother bought  Barbie and Ken dolls for me and proceeded to make a wardrobe closet and fill it with clothes.  She must have enjoyed Barbie, but I did not.  This dress looks like it was made for Barbie, except it has no back!

My week has had a theme of dresses.  While in Washington, DC, I visited Hillwood.  I mentioned it in one of my posts last week when I shared the flower photos.  It was the former estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post and is now a museum open to the public.  You could spend a lot of time there wandering the gardens and find lots of inspiration in her decorative arts collection in the mansion. 

I visited Hillwood to see a special exhibit, Pret-A-Papier, which featured paper dresses created by  Belgian artist, Isabelle de Borchgrave.   She uses special techniques with paint to turn paper into these amazing period dresses.  Here are a few photos I took:

I just wanted to re3ach out and touch them to see if they felt like paper or fabric,

but I saw many museum guards.

Dresses have also become a frequent topic of conversation with the Quiltinis, my quilt group.  During the year 2012 - 2013, we will have married off 5 of our children.  My son was married last June.  And this is really crazy, one of us is going to be having 2 of her children get married in one year.  So you can understand why "what to wear?" and losing weight are our hot topics.

This week we had a fashion show.  We got to ooh and aah and help to accessorize.  This was such a fun girlfriend day.  I was itching to take out my camera to take photos, but I thought I would get my hands smacked!  So I decided to create my own Mother of the whatever dress - definitely not one I would wear, but I know someone else would. 

I beaded the bodice and the bottom.

For those of you that are new to my Wednesday's Wanderings blocks, they are part of a yearlong challenge where I create a 6 1/2" x 8 1/2" block each week to document my wanderings that week. My plan is to make them into a quilt at the end of the year.

I create each block in the same way.  I start with fabric and batting - no backing.

I quilt it.  This is a great opportunity to experiment and have some fun.

  It's little, so it's manageable.

This is a close-up of my loopedy loop free motion quilting.

Then I usually create my design and fuse it to the block, stitch around it and embellish if desired.

This is how the back usually looks. 

I create without a backing fabric, because the stitching can get pretty messy and ugly. 

This one is not that messy.

 When I put the blocks together as I celebrate New Years Eve, I will put use a backing fabric.

So I want to wish the best of luck to my friends with upcoming nuptials.  You will all look gorgeous when you celebrate your children's marriages. 

Eat, Drink and Be Married!!