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!!
