My Couture Wool Skirt

I finally took photos of the couture skirt I made for Apparel Construction II.  I know many people do not like hand sewing because it takes forever, but I love it.  Maybe because I can take my sewing anywhere and call me crazy, but I think hand sewing is rather therapeutic! LOL.  I wished I had more time to include even more couture techniques, but I was lucky enough to finish this. The initial project I wanted to do was to make a multi-layered ballgown I designed :P... but I just didn't have the time with the amount of hours I was working.

You can read and see more photos of the skirt here:
http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/couture-wool-skirt-with-inverted-box-pleat?all_images=1#project-shot-all

If you are interested in learning more about couture techniques, these were a couple of books I used and liked:

• Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire Schaeffer
• The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff

Textile Design

Last month, I transformed a white t-shirt using some techniques I learned in my Textile Design class.  The class was interesting, but I wished it was longer... it only was for four weeks!  But I did get to try my hands on tie-dying (it's making a comeback), silk screening, and sublimination.  You might have seen a lot of sublimination tops these past couple of years.  They look like this, where an image printed on the fabric is broken up with folds, creating these white lines.  If you have a subliminated top, it is most likely made out of polyester.

Since I picked a 100% cotton tee, I decided to dye it "Bahama Blue" and silk screen an image I exacto-knifed out of contact paper.  Here's the end result:

Amazing how this started out as a regular plain white t-shirt!