Don't Stop The Press!

Recently I have been lucky enough to have my work featured in some very exciting places! The first was the Fall 2009 Weddings issue of New York Magazine! The article was online and I'm still not sure if it made it into the print issue. I have to order one eventually and find out. The write-up was about Etsy items in the local area perfect for weddings. Here is the link to the story. They featured my Wallpaper Heart Damask print silk neckties. I sent them three pieces several months prior, upon their request. They used two of the ties and shot this AMAZING photo! That's one hell of a props stylist.

The other day when I got home from HOURS of sewing in my freezing cold studio, I got a card in the mail. It was from Mara, owner of the absolutely amazing Boutique Fabulous in Cambridge, MA. They carry my neckties, and she had sent me this press clipping from a local paper, the Weekly Dig. They featured my Shark necktie in their holiday gift guide! You can read the article here. This is the photo they used online:

This is the actual clipping she sent me. It totally made my day! And the paper's little review is HILARIOUS! I loved it.

Lastly, my good friend and amazing jewelry designer Kenneth Fron did an interview with me recently which he featured on his blog. Of course, he used a photo of me where I'm making a RIDICULOUS face, though wearing one of his fantastic necklaces, but I forgive him. :-) Please take a sec to read the interview here!

That's about it for now! Have to get back to sewing. I just bought a TON of awesome fabric to make more bags in this style. (Named after my BFF I've known since I was 3). I'll be making the new bags in gorgeous upholstery weight large-patterned pixelated houndstooth check in brown & cream, red & black and celadon & slate blue with matching faux leather detailing. Vegan! Check my Etsy shop soon to see these, they will be to die for!

New Ties Galore!

Haven't posted in a while, and although I have about 4 or 5 different things in mind that I want to write about, I thought I would start by sharing some of my new creations! I have 3 new tie designs available for sale, two of which were listed in my Etsy shop for the first time this week. Let's start the roll call!

Bicycle tie! This one has been super popular so far! Cause who doesn't love a good bike? This was originally designed as a custom request to be used for a wedding, and my wonderful customer was so kind as to allow me to continue to use their design. Now anyone can have this awesome tie! Shown here in Cerulean Blue, Beige and Baby Blue. ALL of my tie designs can be printed in ANY color of silk you can imagine and custom colors don't cost extra!!!

Next up is the Fan Coral tie! I think I need to put together an Ocean tie set. I've got an octopus, a seahorse and now coral! And *spoiler alert* there is an awesome new squid design on the way in the next few months. Definitely before the holidays! And it's enough different from the octopus that if you like one, you'll need both! So, yes, fan coral. This design was also made as a custom request for a wedding. The wonderful Chris and Katherine, now happily married, gave me a photograph of what they wanted their tie to look like.

Beginning photo for fan coral tie design

I then drew the coral illustration by hand and had it turned into a screen. Here are Chris and Katherine on their wedding day! (and a close-up of the tie) The tie was printed with silver ink on sky blue. It's a little hard to see in the photo, but looked great in person!

And here are the ties available in my Etsy shop! Shown here in Royal Blue, Seafoam and Sky Blue.

Both of the above designs were finished before I left Phoenix. This next one is my first new creation since moving to NYC! I've been saving this moth design for a while, not knowing what to do with it. I just recently had a silkscreen made with some other custom images done for weddings. There was room left on the layout and I needed something to fill the space! So I created this flight of moths design. I like it. Hope you do! Shown here in Autumn Gold, Turquoise and Red Grape.

These following two ties are designs that were created as custom images for weddings which I will NOT be offering for sale in my shop. The reason for this is that the customers purchased the artwork specifically for use with their order. For both of these I worked with the amazingly talented Beth of wildemoon.etsy.com She and the customer conspired to create their ideal design and when she was done she sent it to me to have made into a screen. Beth was fantastic, lightening fast and very personable and professional. She and I are collaborating on a few designs right now and I would recommend her to ANY of my future customers who are looking for an original design. She can create screen-printable artwork from just about anything! Art for the first tie shown here was created from an illustration, while art for the second tie was created from a set of photographs! Amazing!

Custom Peacock Feather tie design created for Greg & Noel's wedding. Aren't the colors they chose just gorgeous?!

Custom ties for Wendy & Tim's wedding. She's a violist (I think that's what you would call it) and he plays percussion, so their design incorporated fiddlehead ferns and drumstick Allium. Fun! We are also printing a larger version of this on silk shawls I'm making for her bridesmaids.

That's all the tie fun for now! Hit me up with your custom requests and send your engaged friends my way!

Fabric is My Heroin

I could shop for fabric 24 hours a day, just about every day. It is definitely an addiction. In fact, I think I nearly OD'd on fabric this week. My mom was just in town visiting and she's into quilting, so we hit up a bunch of fabric shops as well as a few awesome estate sales and rounded up quite a pile of lovely material.

A big pile of gorgeous dupioni silk! The brown, yellow and lilac purple came from a discount upholstery shop and were only $3 a yard!!! I bought whatever they had left. The bluish-purple iridescent piece on the far right my mom bought for me when she was in NYC recently.


This whole entire group only cost $1! I got all five of these pieces at the same estate sale. From left to right: 1. A LARGE piece of white faux fur. Not sure what I'll do with it, but for 20¢ I couldn't just leave it there! 2. A piece of nice red cotton, I'll use it to line some tote bags I'm working on. 3. An absolutely GORGEOUS piece of very old silk satin. It's pale steel blue in color and feels amazing! Still has a tiny tag on it with writing in Japanese, I'm guessing from when it was purchased originally. 4. An awesome black and white poly knit. Something fun waiting to happen, I know it! 5. Several yards of bright pink corduroy. Good for bags and an obvious addition to my massive corduroy collection.


All the above pieces came from a local discount fabric shop. They sell a lot of factory ends and older pieces. From left: 1. Two yards of a nice fuschia corduroy. 2. A funky paisley print for tote bags. 3. A fantastic floral print which I'll also use for making bags. 4. Really fun blue and brown floral, I've already started making a tote out of this and it should be ready and listed in my Etsy shop tomorrow! 5. Super cute ladybug print cotton. I'm going to make my boyfriend some boxers out of this. I LOVE getting cute prints and making him shorts.


Some really nice fabrics I can't wait to make some clothes with! These all came from the same discount place as the pieces above. From left: 1 & 2 - I don't usually use polyester, but these prints were so gorgeous, the price was right and the fabric so soft! I'm going to make up a basic halter pattern and then bust out a bunch of cute dresses to be for sale just in time for summer! 3. Beautiful maroon herringbone wool blend. If you look really really close the threads are 4 or 5 different colors of purple and red. It's awesome! I'm going to make some pants with this, someday... 4. Nice black and white wool tweed with little rainbow specs. It'll make a great coat. 5. I thought this one was wool when I bought it, and it was in the wool section at the store, but when I got it home and did a burn test it melted and dripped all over my finger. It STILL hurts. I'm guessing it's acrylic. It's still really nice looking and I'm thinking of using it for a cute matching skirt and jacket combo.


This last piece is my favorite one I got all week! It's a to-die-for silk chiffon, mostly black an printed as a repeat panel with the NYC skyline, including the WTC, so this one is obviously at least a few years old. I got everything that was left, which was about 8 yards, and it was only $2.99 a yard. CRAZY deal! They definitely didn't know what they had, which is usually the advantage at this place. Most of the people working there couldn't tell poly from silk with their eyes open. Anyway, I'm going to use it to make a floor length gown with the design as a border along the bottom and the rest of the dress in black, so you can only really see the image if you look close or if the dress is spread out.

I got one more piece of silk this week, a slate blue dupioni, and I haven't actually seen it since I got it home. I'm wondering if my mom accidentally took it home with her. No time to wonder! I need to dive right in and start turning all this fabric into its intended forms. Partially to sell some of the things I create and make back all the money we spent, but mostly so I can make room for more fabric!!! I'm off to the sewing machine!

Construction Zone!

My sewing room always looks like a tornado just rolled through, I find it difficult to allot time for designing AND cleaning. Of course making new clothing comes first! Cleaning can wait til it's absolutely necessary. Anyway, right now it no exception. Half finished garments, pattern pieces, thread, fabric and notions are EVERYWHERE! But at least it's a fun and constructive mess.

Part of my sewing room and its lovely mess

Here's a little bit of what I've been up to since I got back from Chicago. I started this black and white plaid dupioni silk dress yesterday. I've had this fabric for nearly as long as I have been designing. It's just been sitting around waiting and waiting for the right pattern to come its way, and I think I have finally found the thing that it was meant to be used for. Good thing I have about 10 more yards just in case! Yesterday I draped the pattern for the top and made a quick fit sample. Today I sewed all the body fabric together. Right now I'm working on cutting out and piecing the lining together. It will be lined with black silk satin. Tomorrow I need to get a zipper for it and sew in the lining and then voila, a cute dress ready in 3 days! I'm thinking of using a brightly colored petticoat underneath it and then making some kind of sash belt in the same color for contrast. Any color suggestions? I'm leaning towards daffodil yellow, mostly because I already have a petticoat and silk fabric in that color. That petticoat is on underneath it in the second photo and I definitely like the way it helps the dress poof.

On the left is a photo from earlier today of just the bodice sewn and being checked for fit.
On the right the dress is almost complete! Just needs lining and a zipper. Also, it will have
tiny black spaghetti straps when it's finished.

I actually started making this dress with a completely different fabric in mind. I can't afford to buy that fabric just yet, unless a mysterious large amount of money suddenly falls from the sky and lands in my paypal account, so I decided to make a test dress. The plaid one is actually a little different style-wise in the skirt than the forthcoming dress will be. Also, the 2nd dress will have a super cute cropped jacket with petal sleeves. I'm still working out the pattern right now cause it's going have some crazy details and style lines. It'll be lined with and have accent pieces of the fabric the dress will be made from. Here's a little illustration I've made of the jacket:

Soon-to-be real cropped jacket, my original design. The body will be silk noile
and the lining and accents will be printed silk charmeuse. Yummy!

Both of these outfits and many more will be shown at Frock n Roll, a fashion show featuring local designers being held on May 17th. See my past post about the event here.

So, I guess it's time to get back to work! Will post more photos and fun details when this dress is done and I start working on the jacket!