flowers, flowers, everywhere
I did my first craft show last weekend and sold a whopping $100.00 worth!! (I hope you're catching my sarcasm:) The traffic wasn't very high, I put it quite a bit of time and even money toward the whole project and didn't quite make it all back but, still, I'd say the experience was worth it. I shared a booth with a talented jewelry making friend named Nichole and we both felt the stress of looming rejection or failure, but we had fun! Some friends asked me to post pictures with some tutorial links for the things that I made.
These fabric flowers were probably the most successful and unique things that I made. Adults, teenagers and kids liked these because they are sort of casual/organic looking. The edges frey as they are worn, which I love. I had a box full of vintage buttons that my Gran had saved over the years that really came in handy. I would recommend buying a lot on ebay for any sewing projects that you do. Its hard to see the feathery, flouncyness from these pictures but they do have an almost whispy, petal look to them from the way they are folded. I've been in the habit lately of holding on to any remnants of fabric that I get...be it old clothes, stained clothes, sheer curtains from when we moved in...whatever. If there's any morsel of cuteness to a stained clothing item, I save it and repurpose it. These clothes came in really handy for these flowers! I'll bet you could find the stuff in your house to make a flower or two right now...for free! Let me know if you do.
I used a lot of feathers on the silk flowers. Thee cutest ones, bright pink and peacock feathers, sold out so I don't have any pictures. Here is where I found them and for a pretty bang up deal too!
Last and probably least, I wanted to post how the vintage Belle dress turned out. About my dilemma over keeping it a dress for dress up or making it into an adorable skirt for Sundays, my friend, Alyson suggested doing both. She suggested making it into a two piece play dress who's bottom half could also be used for Sundays, weddings, Christmas etc. I thought that was a genius idea and proceeded to hack into the work of some amazing mother from the 1940's. Let's hope that she wasn't glaring knives at me from her cloud in heaven:) Perhaps she's forgiven me now that she can see the finished product. The bottom half was no big deal...rip out the seams and add an elastic waist...nothing to get excited about! But the top was another story. The results you see here were PURELY good luck and chance. I had no real game plan...I just went about in my hairbrained way of cutting, patching, gathering and sewing until it came out looking as much like Belle's gown as I could possibly get it to. I think Georgie 'll like it! I'm glad that family and friends can only see pictures because if you saw the real deal you might notice what a shoddy job I did! It's best, for me, that you remain in ignorance!