I’ve been buried in wool, thread, buttons and whimsy. Just completed four commission pieces. What fun!
The client, Rosalie. Her mother worked in the NYC garment district and was a phenomenal seamstress. Rosalie brought me a silver and black knit suit her mother was working on shortly before her death. Her mom would likely cringe at my stitchery.
I’ve been taking sewing lessons, so my skills have improved…sort of. The three little purses below include mom’s knit and her jazzy buttons, Grandma’s “funeral sweater”–a black wool sweater she always wore to funerals, and cashmere Rosalie chose from my vast collection of shrunken sweaters. One bag is for Rosalie, the others for her cousins.
The bumblebees had to go on the back so as not to compete with the blingie buttons.
The big purse below includes the same stuff as the little ones, but I added shirred seams from the shoulders of the suit jacket. That is the “wrong” side of the fabric.
Again, bee needed to be hidden, so it’s on the pocket under the flap.
The back of the bag gets really wild. Rosalie gave me a blue cufflink that had been her dad’s. He sounds like a marvelous dandy. He put on a smoking jacket each evening after work!
Rosalie wanted me to incorporate some argyle from my collection. This purse got pretty wild.
Now, on to clean up my workspace and get back to coloring all the illustrations in Shel Silverstein’s “Falling Up.” It’s a Christmas gift for grandkids. There are one-hundred-seventy-nine pages. I’m on number twelve…