exquisite design, one stone at a time
**If you're only interested in the hand-dyed lace tutorial and not all my babbling, scroll to where the photos begin!** The process for most of the custom roller skating outfits I make is fairly simple: coach has an idea in March, we settle on a plan in early April, dress is finished by early to… Continue reading Hand-Dyed Lace and Where Crazy Ideas Begin
Truly golden, as in gold medal. My blog silence over the past three months is due to a ridiculously heavy sewing load, leading up to both the regional and national championships for roller skating, my largest client base by far. I'm not complaining...I had fifteen separate outfits in various stages of completion during one particular… Continue reading Silence is Golden
I finished this latest creation just in time to enter it in The Monthly Stitch's July challenge, "MonoSewn," where everything had to be black, white, or both. You can read about it here. I knew I wanted a completely white dress, but what I didn't plan on back in November when I decided on this… Continue reading Fifty Shades of White
I recently read a friend's Facebook post where she was unhappily (and slightly unsuccessfully) sewing her daughter's Girl Scout badges to her vest, and various other friends were chiming in and debating the virtues of glue vs. needle and thread. It made me realize that 99% of the world's population is blissfully clueless about the… Continue reading Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Ode to E6000
"Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain." -- Joseph Campbell Except that Joseph wasn't talking about literal burning; painful, blister-inducing burning. But I promised this story, so here it is. Once upon a time there was a skater. A very sweet, very earnest skater, who wanted so… Continue reading Saturday Sayings: Burning Out the Pain
"For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, OK? It's not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it's not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer." - Ira… Continue reading Saturday Sayings: When It’s OK to Stink
"You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing." -- Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration Skating people know this quote means it's show season. Show season for us is a strange thing; all our energies and focus are on competing the entire year, so shows are at the same time a… Continue reading Saturday Sayings: It Must Be Show Season
So I stumbled upon a sewing collective called "The Monthly Stitch." Now, not to bash other collectives, but this one seems to be full of completely normal, nice people for a change...yet they approved me, so... Every month they host a challenge, something of a goal, a way to spur creativity and set a deadline… Continue reading April’s Challenge: Seeing Double, Sewing Double
So I missed a Wednesday, because I was exploring the textile district of Los Angeles, the largest in the world. And to make matters worse, my sewing machine is in the shop for three weeks for a tune-up and lube job. However, there is a little something on Peg today: This is an extraordinary piece… Continue reading What Are They Wearing Wednesday: February 12, 2014
"Do what I want. Not what I say." -Brian Fitzpatrick Brian Fitzpatrick may not have much of anything to do with sewing costumes. As the head of Google's Data Liberation Front and its Transparency Engineering Team, he probably knows less about encasing elastic or princess seams than my 18-year old son (granted, my other two… Continue reading Saturday Sayings: Deciphering the Message
Leave No Stone Unglued 