First wedding of the season!

My absolute favorite thing about making dresses for people is seeing the people wearing them!  And that's especially true when it comes to wedding dresses.  Every bride imbues what I make with her own personal style and special touches--I just love to see how it all comes together!  And then when I get pics of the happy couple, it's just like the best thing ever. :-)

Look at how adorable these two are!  Danica, the lovely bride, added her own touch to the bridal Emmeline by changing the sleeves to cap sleeves, and then totally played up the retro-fabulous style by adding a gorgeous black lace sash, the perfect black shrug and a glamorous black floral fascinator.  Too perfect for words!  Thank you to Danica and her handsome new hubster for sharing these fantastic pics.  Congratulations and best wishes to you both! :-)

Famous and I didn't even know it

Being featured on Etsy's front page is a cause for much celebration...however, Etsy doesn't notify shop owners when one of their items is featured on the front page. Weird, but true. If you're smart, you can link your Facebook site to your shop site, and your Facebook site will automatically announce when you've been featured--which is awesome, but only became a functional feature a few weeks ago. So in the nearly a year that I've had my little shop open, I've never known how to find out when I'd been featured--until today!

This discovery came via a truly amazing and fantastically useful website called Craft Cult, which not only tracks and archives all of the Etsy front page treasuries, but also gives Etsy shop owners all kinds of helpful shop management tools. I knew I'd been featured on the front page once before, but I only found out about that because another Etsian sent me a congratulatory convo--but now, with Craft Cult, I searched for my shop and behold: four other features I didn't know about! Holy moly, wow, and hooray! Can you spot my dresses?

Eye candy: Lovely Clusters

A fellow Etsian, Elizabeth of iviemade, alerted me to a fabulous blog/website called Lovely Clusters that features curated collections from Etsy artists and allows its readers to create their own "lovely clusters" - akin to the treasuries on Etsy.  When you visit the site and view the clusters, you can click through to the artists' Etsy sites--very cool! Check out the one Elizabeth put together--yep, that's my Emmeline dress in there. :-)

 Thank you so much to Elizabeth for putting me in the know about this fab site!

Etsy front page feature!

I am so excited to announce that my Ella dress has been featured on the front page of Etsy!  This is such a huge honor, and I'm incredibly excited. :-)  Hooray!

Check out the feature here:

Oh so retro: 1950s bridal ballgown

It's my first true ballgown of this bridal season, and I'm so excited to finally be posting some pics!  This gorgeous dress is a custom design made for a super-sweet San Antonio bride named Mary.  We found each other on Etsy, of course--I'm still blown away by how many fantastic folks I've met through this amazing site--so many fun, amazingly creative people!  Mary is a creative person herself--floral design is her genre--and was looking for a unique, retro-inspired gown that would flatter her figure and incorporate aspects of various dresses that she had seen online.  Like so many brides, the bridal gown shopping experience had proved more than a little disheartening, so she set out to find someone who could make her dream dress--and luckily she stumbled across my site!

The creative collaboration experience with my brides is unique every time, but is always enjoyable--my brides most often come up with the amazing ideas, and I just figure out how to make them happen!  In Mary's case, she put together an inspiration board to give me an idea of what design details appealed to her sense of style and the aesthetic of the event she was putting together, and then we had a marathon phone session in which we talked through the dress from top to bottom--from the shape of the bodice and the fabric choice to the types of tulle we used for the skirt and the proportions of the dress overall.  I sketched as we talked, and we were quickly able to come up with a concept that Mary loved.  Then it was time for me to get to work!

Oh, my goodness, did this dress remind me just how much labor women put into their gorgeous bridal gowns back in the day!  All that ruched chiffon in the bodice is hand-sewed with invisible thread, and there are eight layers of hand-gathered tulle in the skirt...whew!  My Aunt Anne wore a dress that was nearly identical to her prom in 1958--when I put Mary's gown on my mannequin to photograph it, I had a bit of deja vu!  And of course my Aunt Anne and my Grandma Ruby (the original seamstress extraordinaire in my family--which is why she's one of the namesakes of my shop!) did all of the work themselves. 
Mary's dress is so clearly a 1950s gown-makes me think of white gloves, orange blossoms, big bands and ballrooms and white dinner jackets.  And of course, it's perfect for a contemporary bride as well!  That's what I love so much about vintage and retro design--the style is so classic and elegant and full of gorgeous detail that it's timeless.

Thank you so much to Mary, who gave me the opportunity to make this amazing dress for her!  All the best wishes to you and your hubby-to-be. :-)

My new spring dress needs a name

I've been wanting to make this dress for a while...I love the navy blue pinpoint oxford fabric, the 1950s-inspired shape, the bateau neckline and the three-quarter length sleeves...but my favorite part is the beautiful dart and pleat detail on the bodice and skirt (see the pics below.)  OH and of course it has pockets!  I lined the skirt to give it some a-line retro flare.

Two questions:

1. What should I name it?
2. How should I wear it?

Delphinium dress

 

As a pale-skinned, pink-undertone person, I've found that deep blue is one color that I can always rely on to make me feel fabulous.  The Delphinium dress is my take on sexy/sweet: it has princess seaming and a fitted shape, so it's more figure-conscious than I usually wear--but sometimes you just have to flaunt what you've got!  The deep scoop neckline accented with a pleated gathered ruffle frames the face and softens the streamlined shape of the dress--plus it's perfect for those of us in the A cup/B cup category. 

I am crazy in love with the gorgeous royal blue cotton sateen fabric that I used for this dress!  It is soft and lightweight, with a beautiful drape and just a bit of stretch--perfect for a fitted silhouette.  It took me a long time to come up with a name for the dress...I wanted a name that would convey the gorgeous color, as well as the soft ruffled neckline.  A floral name seemed right, but there are so few blue flowers!  Finally, I hit on it: delphinium!  Here's the description I came up with for my Etsy site:

Delphinium, also known as larkspur, is one of the few flowers that blooms with a vivid blue blossom. The softly ruffled neckline and the vibrant, jewel-like hue are reminiscent of the delicate petals of this lovely Alpine wildflower. The Delphinium dress is composed of cotton sateen--a rich, smooth, slightly stretchy fabric with a subtle sheen. A deeply scooped neckline and a flattering, closely tailored fit make this dress perfect for a special occasion, from a cocktail party to a special date to a summer wedding--while the breathable cotton fabric ensure that you’ll be comfortable enough to have a good time!

 

I ended up wearing this gorgeous dress for a fancy birthday dinner with my sweetheart.  So perfect!

Dreaming in coral, part two: Tarocca

The next iteration of my coral obsession took shape in a flirty little ruffled sundress.  I found the most gorgeous orangey-coral twill--a soft, lightweight twill, not that stiff kind that you use for khaki pants.  (Did you know that "twill" refers to the weave, and not to the weight or body of the fabric?  There is even silk twill!  I have some, and it's beautiful!)

As soon as I saw this fabric color in person, I had my inspiration for the dress design: the color reminded me of a truly AMAZING gelato shop in Rome--whose name escapes me now, of course--that had gelato and sorbet in flavors that I'd never even imagined.  I think we went there twice a day every day we were in Rome and never had the same flavor twice!  This little shop somehow distills the purest and best flavor--whatever flavor it is--and makes it into the smoothest, creamiest iced confection you could imagine.  And this fabric was exactly the color of their blood orange sorbet--darker than grapefruit, more orange than pink--which in Italian is called tarocca.  So of course the dress had to be the Tarocca dress!  And of course it had to be 1950s-inspired, like something Audrey Hepburn would have worn in Roman Holiday.  

You know I love a little ruffle, so that was a given.  I wanted the neckline to be open but not too deep--still appropriate for a 1950's girl.  Add a full gathered skirt and a little sash to nip in the waist, and voila!  I love it!  I think this dress would be so sweet with a little cardigan...or to wear while sipping wine, sitting at a table under an awning, watching the world go by...maybe even as a bridesmaid dress!