Welsh Countryside on a London Street

29 Nov 2012 8 Comments

by Sue Schlabach 129twigandvine in Artisanal Living, Artists, Creativity, Design, England, Fashion, handmade, London, Sewing Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Where I left you on Columbia Road in London, not so long ago, was Vintage Heaven and Cake Hole. Oh to be there today, nibbling cake and sipping tea. I am, however content to be here this morning. There is a dusting of snow on the hillside and animals waiting at the fence for breakfast. I am drinking tea. And there is good work to do.

This doesn’t stop me from a memory stroll on a Sunday morning in London.

Come along please.

Further along Columbia Road—past the drifts of tulips, hibiscus, and heather in the flower market (that filled that Sunday street)—I came upon Jessie Chorley and Buddug Humphrey’s treasure trove. Their shop, J&B, is self described as ‘A little bit of the Welsh Countryside in the city’.

Indeedy.

These two friends hale from Snowdonia, Wales, and bring the character of the place into everything they do. And then some.

The doorway was an arbor of handmade cardboard letters flanked by clothing embroidered in wonky letters and marvelous enameled jewelry, wall plates and sculptural cups adorned with words and whimsy. The characters of Jessie and Buddug (pronounced bu-th-ig) slowly came into focus. Jessie, the gal with needle and floss took hold of any scrap of cloth and turned it into art to wear or gaze upon. Buddug was the one who crafted enameled metal into jewelry and artwork adorned with handwriting and sketches.

I was struck speechless. I wandered around like a blithering idiot and I think I met Jessie. I mumbled incoherently and she probably took me for a simpleton.

{Struck simple by works of creativity, resourcefulness, good heartedness, beauty.}

Jessie gives sewing workshops! If you’re in London, check it out. Both women have interesting websites, blogs, on-line shops.

J&B Online Shop.

J&B Shop Blog.

Jessie’s website.

Buddug’s website.

Photo credits: all images in this post are from Jessie and Buddug’s various websites.

Deborah Bowness

23 Oct 2012 6 Comments

by Sue Schlabach 129twigandvine in Art Portfolios, Artists, Creativity, Design, Fashion, Interior Design, Photography

Cattywumpus is a good word. I don’t know how it is spelled.

It’s the word that came to mind when I rounded the bend near the dressing rooms at Liberty of London back in September. There I came face to face with one of Deborah Bowness’ dress images. It was green.

Only I didn’t know it was by Deborah Bowness, and I didn’t know that it was wallpaper, handmade in England. I just knew that I loved it.

As luck would have it, a similarly wonky layered photograph of a lamp popped up in one of the many design websites I troll. It seemed like the creative hand behind the lamp matched my memory of that layered dress. The source was discovered!

Like David Hockney paintings, that I came to love back in the early 1980s, Bowness layers images up against each other in ways I can only call cattywumpus.

Ordinary becomes extraordinary.

The Reveal

27 Jun 2012 11 Comments

by Sue Schlabach 129twigandvine in Creativity, Design, Family, Fashion, handmade, In the Studio, Sewing Tags: , , , , ,

I spent the winter and spring on a labor of love which came into bloom a few weeks ago at the wedding of my brother-in-law Daryl, to the marvelous Deborah.

Remember all those ruffles I was making in April? They turned into flowers. Dozens of raw silk flowers, that I overlaid on garlands of lace leaves cut from Deborah’s mother’s veil, worn exactly 50 years ago. My parent’s celebrated their 50th anniversary on June 16, so it’s a special year for new promises and renewed ones.

Cutting the vintage lace made my heart fibrillate, but the near-heart attack subsided after the first few cuts. Each flower took on its own personality, and I came up with new techniques and ideas as I went.

Here is the dress.

Tomorrow I’ll show you the wedding.

Victoire Gardner

01 Feb 2012 3 Comments

by Sue Schlabach 129twigandvine in Artisanal Living, Artists, color, Creativity, Design, Fashion, Friendship, Seasons, Sewing, Vermont, Weaving, winter Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This week we received, not one, but TWO packages in the mail from my friend Victoire. It was a red letter week!

Victoire never forgets my daughter’s birthday, and her package arrived right on the big day: the box was adorned in a bow made from hot pink surveyor’s tape (I think), with color bits added here and there in a way that only Victoire knows how. She takes the truly ordinary (surveyor’s tape!!!) and makes something extraordinary.

Well. She. Is. French.

The second package was for me, and arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Inside were bright green cards (be still my heart) with letterpress hen designs and scalloped edges on the envelopes. She thought of me when she saw them, and—voila!—she sent them my way.

This was another reminder to send real mail to friends. Since last fall I’ve been trying to do this, and need to try harder. I’ve been the lucky recipient of handwritten letters from old friends lately—thanks Erin and Alicia!—and it is my turn to reciprocate.

A half hour after I opened my package, Victoire posted an entry to her blog SquatorClamor. The photographs of a scarf she made a few years ago best illustrate her style and her creative genius. I have a green version of this scarf that she made for me—not quite as large (since I’m a wee thing)—but just as attention-getting and unique. I went right to the cedar chest last night and pulled out my green wooly confection and I’ll wear it today.

Another red letter day.

In addition to wool, Victoire takes ordinary things like socks, tee shirts, scraps of clothes…and turns them into necklaces, bracelets, hair bands, cuffs, scarves, clothing, and I’m sure there is something I’ve forgotten.

And, last, Victoire shares my chicken obsession and is a member of Henhouse Fibers.

Passion and Paper, and Fabric too

01 Aug 2011 2 Comments

by Sue Schlabach 129twigandvine in Artists, Creativity, Design, Fashion, In the Studio

First, fabric passion.

Last week my studio was alive with activity. Brenda, a fellow Henhouse gal, and Denise, of ilo fabulousness, came over to cut, design and sew feverishly for a morning. We started with baked goodies and tea and coffee out on the patio. (Surrounded by my partially weeded imperfect flower garden.)

But the morning was perfect. July sunshine, chickens clucking, lambs already seeking shade at 9:30 in the morning.

Scissors got busy as the caffeine gave us a jolt and we created five textile covers for composition books in no time. Two are on the shop and the others will go to Zuzu’s in Norwich, Vermont.

Now that we established a rhythm as a trio we’ll do another sew-a-thon and hope to produce twice the goods. The productivity was catching, because I’ve been back at the sewing table cutting and sewing on some shirts and garments.

Now the paper….

I just learned of the online magazine Paper Runway and was captivated by this paper dress. It’s time to start playing with paper again.

And where fabric and paper meet—oh my.

Last week I mentioned meeting an artist after a pond swim. She specializes in clothing and has created sculptural garments with paper, bark and textiles. Really amazing work. She is Sam Talbot Kelly. Take a look at her construction and stitchery. Inspiring, intriguing.

Paper and cloth—there is no end to what can be made with these simple materials.

Dancing in Red

08 Apr 2011 3 Comments

by Sue Schlabach 129twigandvine in Creativity, DIY Tutorials, Fashion, In the Studio, Sewing

Every day this week I’ve found gossamer bits of glittery red fabric on the floor of my studio and in the melting patches of snow between the studio and the house. I think I will find these fragments for weeks to come.

In early March I was asked to redesign a dress for a friend who was about to turn 50 and chose to host a prom for herself and closest friends. Crazy idea, no?

Let me introduce you to the prom queen. Peg is the mother of not one, but two, sets of twins (who are now grown). She went back to school to be a chef when all four children were still young. Now she works as the private chef for a local couple and lives just a few miles from here.

Peg showed up at my house with an inexpensive red prom dress and acres of red tulle and the aforementioned sheer fabric with sparkles. She also had a lovely sketch of some ideas for adding fullness to the dress and flowers on the bodice. The rest was in my court.

At the end of this post I get all geeky about what I did to alter the dress, so you can go there if you are so inclined.

The whole process made me giddy (when I wasn’t slightly intimidated by it). My deadline was March 26, the night of the festive gala—I had about three weeks to make the transformation.

The prom queen arrived on Saturday morning of the big day with two of her daughters and her little dog Thornton P. Wizard. You couldn’t have asked for a better photo prop than Thornton! Peg was thrilled with the results (phew) and had a splendid night of kicking up her heels on the dance floor.

We should all embrace the age of 50 with Peg’s spirit of youth and joy. Don’t you agree?

A few notes about the prom dress alterations:
(I’ll try to draw some sketches to accompany these notes. I’ll add them soon. But today I’m off to Montréal!!)

First, I cut into the front two vertical seams (24″ up from the hem) and added wide triangles of the sheer  fabric with sparkles to form godets and add drama. The insets started as 24″ squares with one corner rounded off and then the two straight sides sewn into the cuts I made in the vertical seams. Top-stitching helped the extra fabric to be full, but stay within the dress line.

I took an additional 24″ square of red tulle and gathered it at one corner, added a fabric flower (more on that below) and attached that on top of each godet so there would be more fabric to swish and flow. I added two more of these poofs (I can’t think of a better word for them!) to the back seams that corresponded to the front godets. I cut across the bottom of all four of the tulle poofs so they were slightly shorter than the hem of the dress.

Next, I found a silk ivory skirt with red toile patterns in my fabric bin. I used to love to wear that skirt, but it had its share of thread pulls and was ready to turn into fabric flowers for the bodice and the top of the tulle poofs.

Peg wanted straps on the dress so she could dance with reckless abandon, so I sewed tubes out of the silk toile and gathered it into ruched layers over red straps that showed vaguely through the semi-transparent toile. The inner red strap inside the tube assured that the straps would have some strength since the silk fabric was so delicate. The tubes of silk were about three times the length of the strap, making for lots of gathers.

Everything I know about making fabric flowers I learned from my friend Victoire Gardner. To make the flowers I cut long pieces (up to 36″) of fabric on the bias between 1″ and 1.5″ wide. I basted down the center of each long strip and gathered up the fabric. Then it could be wound into a fluffy peony or rose with various petal styles based on how much of the raw edges I chose to tuck in or leave out. To make a gathered flower, go to this tutorial. A tutorial for a rolled fabric flower is found here.

More flowers followed in the solid red sheer fabrics, with handsewn bead centers, and thin streamers of bias-cut sheer red.

Créations Isabelle de Borchgrave

24 Feb 2011 1 Comment

by Sue Schlabach 129twigandvine in Artists, Creativity, Exhibitions, Fashion

Pulp Fashion

February 5-June 5, 2011, San Francisco

Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave is a painter by training, but textile and costume are her muses. Working in collaboration with leading costume historians and young fashion designers, de Borchgrave crafts a world of splendor from the simplest rag paper. Painting and manipulating the paper, she forms trompe l’oeil masterpieces of elaborate dresses inspired by rich depictions in early European painting or by iconic costumes in museum collections around the world.  The Legion of Honor is the first American museum to dedicate an entire exhibition to the work of Isabelle de Borchgrave, although her creations have been widely displayed in Europe.

Pulp Fashion draws on several themes and presents quintessential examples in the history of costume—from Renaissance finery of the Medici family and gowns worn by Elizabeth I and Marie-Antoinette to the creations of the grand couturiers Frederick Worth, Paul Poiret, Christian Dior, and Coco Chanel. Special attention is given to the creations and studio of Mariano Fortuny, the eccentric early-20th-century artist who is both a major source of inspiration to de Borchgrave and a kindred spirit.

-excerpted from the Pulp Fashion invitation

Some things don’t change. When I first met Isabelle de Borchgrave in 1996, I stood in awe of her artistic talents and achievements. I feel the same way now. Isabelle lives in Brussels, but exhibits her many creations worldwide. She is a painter, a paper sculpture genius, and makes a mean cup of espresso.

When Wild Apple first published her artwork, Isabelle was still painting and exhibiting traditional canvas paintings of decorative flowers and landscapes. All the while textiles and fashion were her passion. Whenever we visited her Brussels studio, mannequins adorned in costumes of the drawing rooms of Marie Antoinette, or of the time of Cleopatra, surrounded the work tables and easels. Using historical reference and fashion history, Isabelle began to make fashion history herself, with paper and paint her humble media. Her work tables were strewn with tissue thin papers for ethereal layers, gathered and formed to be a decorative cuff or a cascading skirt inset. Painted (and often) perforated papers were in various states of shaping for the main dress parts, the papers are gathered, pleated and tucked to suggest many different types of textiles from sheer silks to heavy damasks. Once she had some silver-painted paper she was crumpling and pleating to resemble a crushed silk with astonishing results. I sipped her strong espresso and imagined how I’d find my way toward my own creative passion.

Then in 1998 her first collection of painted paper dresses, Papier a la Mode—created with Canadian costume artist Rita Brown—began to make the rounds at European and US museums. There was an opening at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and another at the MFA Boston. Isabelle has gone on to make paper kimonos, the Fortuny collection—exhibited in Venice—and the list of exhibitions grows along with her collection of stunning paper dresses.

If you happen to be in San Francisco this spring you could lay your eyes on Pulp Fashion. It would even be worth a special trip.


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