My First "Formal" Photo Shoot

This past Monday morning Sonja and I gathered with four of our Western Avenue Studio friends in Adrien Bisson's photography studio.  I needed good photos of the jackets I'd gotten accepted by the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen and they'd agreed to model.  It was my first time doing this, so I felt pretty clueless, but everyone made it very easy.

Adrien told everyone just where and how to stand--where to look and place your hands, how to position your feet and adjust your weight on your feet, and so on.  Of course we all got silly which helped me to relax.  Adrien got so many good pictures I had a hard time to narrow down to just a few per jacket.

Now I have a wonderful selection of formal and relaxed pictures that I can use for exhibit entries, postcards and other promotions.  I posted several of the "just for fun" pictures on Facebook.  Here are some of the more formal pictures.

Dance Rhythms - African Hand-dyed Cotton Damask with pieced insets

Sheer Magic (left) - Layers of embroidered silks; Obsession (right) - Silks and linens with hand couching

Obsession (left); Jellyroll Rag (right) - Embroidered silk with insets and couching

My goal for this session was to convey that I make jackets for real women that are easy to wear and make you feel beautiful.  I think that comes through--do you?

Now that I have these, my next step is to submit my application for the Craftwear exhibit and shop at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen's show in Sunapee, NH next summer.

Using up Scraps

Here's the beginning of my next jacket.  I had a length of this lovely lavender-gray silk that needed some jazzing up and lots of bits of colorful silk too beautiful to throw away so I'm bringing them together.

I started randomly piecing together the silk bits into long, narrow lengths.

Then I laid out my length of silk and used my rotary cutter to cut the curves.  Once the edges have been pressed under, I laid them over a pieced strip and top-stitched the edges.  This length will be the body of the jacket.  The front is at the top.  The lower half is the back.

Next step planned is couching some of the Stef Francis 5400 rayon threads to add even more curves and color.  That's my fun for this afternoon.

Achieved a New Milestone this Week

This has been a nerve-wracking and an exhilarating week.

First, I finished the sleeves on Kim's jacket and got them set in.  In every project I work on, I always go back and forth on how much or even whether I like the results.  For this one, it wasn't until I got the first sleeve in that I was totally sure that I was pleased with the piecing design.  Of course I was still nervous about it until Kim saw it and confirmed that she liked it too.

Here's the front

And the back

She came in to try it on Thursday.  I'll have to tweak the fit a bit before I put in the lining and bind the edges, but we're coming to the home stretch.

My next big hurdle for the week came on Wednesday when I traveled to Concord, New Hampshire for a jury session with the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen.  To say that I was nervous, is truly an understatement, but I am pleased to report that I was accepted.  It has been a struggle for me to keep working on passing this bar but I'm glad I kept working on it.  If it hadn't been for several of my friends here who are members supporting and prodding me, I'm sure I would have given up.  Of course, the real work is just beginning--I'm playing with the big kids now so I'll have to raise my standards all around.  

First thing I did was to set up my profile on the League site.  I'm really there under fiber artists.  Check it out.  The next thing I did was to meet with a photographer here, Adrien Bisson, to talk about getting some "real" photographs of women wearing my jackets.  Now I just have to see if I can line up some of my friends to model.  It's all very exciting and certainly fun.  I'll keep you posted.