Poppies: Work in Progress

I'm working on this dress right now. Loving how it's turning out so far! I'm going to do a series of botanical inspired dresses. This will be the first one.

This one was inspired by a gorgeous photograph by the amazingly talented HoneyTree on Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/listing/51216375/deep-purple-art-photography-botanical )

I made the appliques to look 3 dimensional and very organic. I hand cut and texturized all the leaves.

The stems are sewn just up the center so the fabric rolls in on itself.

The poppies started as circles cut with my die cutter. I hand cut some wavey texture across the tops and layered different sized petals.

I pinned them on (not using any adhesive) and straight stitched them on. Then I went back and added in lines on the flowers and leaves to give them more detail and dimension. Can't wait to finish this dress!!

Sneak peak!

Here are more pictures from Sunday's photoshoot. Right now I only have the navy dresses listed in the shop as they are the only dresses actually finished! The red ones will be listed in a day or so once I get back to sewing. The ones with the striped fabric should hopefully be up by the weekend. I'm having to treat the fabric to keep the red from bleeding into the white stripes.

Blossoms, Blisters, and a sneak peak

One of the last orders I did before moving on to the new designs for the shop was my cherry blossom dress. I designed this dress a long time ago, probably in the first few months of having my shop open. It was one of my favorite dresses, very intricate and detailed. I was only selling a few dresses a month for the first year so I had time to make such detailed dresses. Well, no one ever bought it until this March. March, when I was selling nearly a dress a day! ACK! I didn't re-list the dress after it sold and probably won't bring it back to the shop. Since this willl probably be the last time I make this dress I decided to take a few pictures along the way. I worked on the cherry blossom dress and another dress at the same time (both for the same customer).

Here are both dresses and the hats all cut out and ready to sew!

The applique. All 26 hand cut flowers and the tree trunk.

Very carefully placed each flower to exactly match the original dress. I laid them side by side so I could arrange the flowers in the same places. Whew!

This is where the blisters come in! I painstakingly stitched around each flower (with matching thread). They are so small, I had to  raise the presser foot after almost every stitch to reposition the dress. This took over 2.5 hours. Seriously. Blisters.

Ta da!!! All done! The bunny took all of 5 minutes to stitch on. I did both dresses in a day and a half. Woot!

Ahhhhhh. While I'm not in any hurry to make this again, I *might* just have to make one next winter for my own girls. I do love this dress.

 And now for the sneak peak!!! Here is about 6 yards of the fabric I'll be using on two designs. I already have 6 dresses cut out of this (plus another 11 cut out in two other fabrics!!) I'm doing a photoshoot on Sunday with the first 4 new dresses. Can't wait!