The Dressmaker

Final Grand Dress

2009-06-01T17:04:00.000-07:00

Entirely sewn by hand...

Red Blood Funerary Gown

2009-05-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

Model: Marni Fantyn Borgonia
Photographer: Michael Kusuda

Photographer: Alex Zamora

The Black Ball Dress

2009-05-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

Model: Lina Chang
Photographer: Alex Zamora

I liked the hem of Morticia Adams' skirt, so I wanted to do my own.

Queer Fashion Show 2009 Rose Swirl Dress

2009-05-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

Photographer: Michael Kusuda

Model: Lilia Sandoval
Photographer: Alex Zamora

This dress was inspired by a technique I used last year. I really liked the effect of just a giant ball of ruffles at the hem. I used wool and nylon felt and cut it in spiral circles and sewed it onto the skirt in various ways to create the rippling effect.

Second to the Last Dress with Belted Knee

2009-04-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

Studio Photos by: Alex Zamora

Model: Becky Dayton
Photographer: Michael Kusuda

Queer Fashion Show 2009

2009-03-10T21:16:00.001-07:00

This is the group photo from a photoshoot that Michael Kusuda took, who wasn't the photographer, but took a bunch of pretty outdoor photos that I will be posting gradually. Now that QFS is over I have time to work on clothes for myself and also this blog, and my website portfolio! For now, enjoy this picture. Just a note, a lot of the clothes were sewn by hand. The machine only helped for menial work.

Queer Fashion Show (Morphing Dress)

2009-02-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

i
Hello! I haven't updated this this in a while. Right now I am grading math homework, but I got distracted. So above are two dresses for the Queer Fashion Show, which will be on Marth 6 and 7th of this month. The first dress is pleated silk and black craft felt (I'm using a lot of this felt!) which is actually supposed to be made from recycled plastic bottles. The second dress is also felt, I call it a morphing dress because it can be scrunched up, turned upside down, and worn in many different ways. I'm busy with the show, but after the show I should have some more detailed photos up. Yeah that's me in there, not a fan of being my own model but I needed photographs to get a grant to buy supplies for the show.

Blue Plaid Rose Dress

2008-12-20T01:29:00.000-08:00

So currently I'm obsessed with cutting circles out of fabric and fashioning them into flower ruffles. It makes for an interesting effect. I'm also obsessed with making dresses that look like separates but aren't, so I can throw this dress on and it will look like a shirt and a skirt. This was a fun dress! I hand sewed the invisible zipper in and I also hand sewed all the ruffles onto the skirt.

Grandma's Pearls

2008-09-12T12:40:00.001-07:00

So this is my newest creation. It looks better on me, but as I fail to be a model or photogenic, I'd rather have it displayed this way. It is meant to be baggy, and then cinched at the hem. It creates an interesting bagginess at the butt, which I like! I had this little margarine container full of plastic pearl beads, and those long glass beads, so I had to use them all up! And I did!

This dress is another dress that is entirely sewn by hand! The fabric is knit, courtesy of the $2-per-yard section from Wal-Mart. I apologize to those of you who loathe Wal-Mart, but I am one of those poor people who rely on affordable stores like that to get supplies. Lucky for you the only thing I really get from there is fabric. Someday I'll have the luxury of buying expensive fabrics from good stores, but until then there's Wal-Mart. And I rather like the challenge of trying to transform cheap fabrics into something nicer.

Anyway, first I constructed this dress on a larger dress form my friend gave me. I put the dressform on the largest size and draped the fabric over it. Then I transported the dress to the dressform of my size, thus creating bagginess.

The back.

Beading details.

Pearls on the bow.

More beads!

50's Mexican Stripe Dress

2008-09-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

So this is a dress I made a while back, around June I think. I used scraps from the Queer Fashion Show to fabricate the skirt of this dress. The skirt is made from strips of scrap fabric that I cut, then I sewed them together to form a really, really long rectangle. Then I gathered the fabric to form this full skirt, very reminiscent of the 50's. I think I just might be over my 50's obsession. I don't really make these anymore, thank goodness I finally outdid myself! I made so many dresses with the whole full-skirt-starting-at-the-waist thing. This one took a very long time, because I had to sew together the strips, and then press the seams flat.

This is a close-up of the skirt.

The side seam. I was obsessed with buttons and button loops, because personally I dislike the whole process of using zippers. Obviously I did not have enough buttons (I was using scraps and leftovers, and findings from my mom's sewing box and closet), and I had to use a fish button for the bottom because I ran out of white buttons. I like this improvisation! The fish ads to the tropical feel of the dress, if you can find the fish that is. Sometimes it gets buried in the gathers of the dress.

Red Bow Shirt

2008-08-21T23:43:00.001-07:00

So I guess this shirt is "draped." I made this before I knew of the technique. I basically made it by cutting out a rectangle, gathered one side, and I made a rectangle for the bow. This is how I originally started making clothes. I would either get a store-bought shirt, place the shirt on top of the fabric, and cut the fabric around the shirt, then sew it together!

Well t-shirts are simple anyway. I really don't understand it when people say "oh, the cut of this t-shirt is so great! It fits me well." Of course it will fit you well! It's made out of knit jersey fabric, which stretches to hug your curves and sticks to your hollows. The only revolutionary thing that anyone can do to a t-shirt is to cut it a little in at the waist to fit a woman's body better. Obviously I'm not a big fan of t-shirts, but they're great in that they're comfortable and fit anyone!

This red shirt basically represents the beginnings of clothing construction for me. I cut a rectangle, and depending on the affect I want, I cut out of the rectangle. For example, if I want a shirt to fit at the waist, I cut out the sides and maybe darts to bring the rectangle inward.

Anyway, It's hard to explain how I learned how to make clothes unless I demonstrate it. I was never a big fan of patterns, although I do recognize that I can learn a lot from them, I just can't restrict myself that way. I loathe all the instructions, the strict step-by-step process. My goal this summer was to at least make one thing with a pattern. When I was in Santa Cruz, I went to this free garage sale, and the girl had patterns from her grandmother. They were from the 50's and 60's! I love old fashioned things, so I decided to try to make a shirt. But it didn't turn out right and so I gave up.

Oh well. At least now I have a dress form, which I love! I had to get a petite size because all the boobs on the normal sized mannequins are too big for me, and the petite size covered all my measurements, except that the torso length is shorter than mine. I discovered that I can pull her torso out of her hips to lengthen her body (it was such a strange thing to do to a body replica) but then it left this indent all around her waist area. Oh well! I've made two dresses on it so far, and they fit me perfectly! Although I'm going to have to adjust her again because I wanted to try what this designer/artist Cat Chow did, which was make a dress out of continuous zipper. In my mom's closet there's this huge roll of zipper tape. I guess what you're supposed to do is cut it to the length you want and the attach the zipper pull onto it (there are tons of those in her closet also). So I wanted to make a top part of a dress like that too! It is such an interesting technique. Although when I sewed this zipper together, some of it bunched a little funny. But to put this one, you have to put yourself in this zipper loop, then you zip the zipper all around your body, and it sort of wraps your body up and turns into a top! It's rather wonderful! And to take it off, (to put it on and off is rather painstaking) you unzip around and around and the shirt unravels into a pile of zipper tape! I really like the idea of an inconspicuous pile of zipper tape, and then when you zip it up it transforms into something! I have to think of something interesting to make. Like a fat pile of zippers, and when you zip it up it becomes a horse or something. It's a great medium to work with.

Ruffles

2008-08-16T11:58:00.001-07:00

I wanted to experiment with ruffles, and this is what I came up with! I cut the ruffles by cutting a spiral out of fabric. I used a knit/net fabric for the ruffles to prevent fraying. The shell of the dress is knit because I wanted the dress to hug the body naturally. The downside of using a knit dress and huge ruffle applique is that the heaviness of the ruffles pulls on the knit, creating ripples.

With every dress I make I try to utilize a new technique that I have not used before, so I am constantly learning new things and I have more options in designing.

This dress was entirely sewn by hand, by the way. I'm such a big fan of hand-sewing! I bought this book called Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire B. Shaeffer. It has been such a help! I find sewing by hand to be very, very relaxing. I sit in front of the television or radio, watch something that's educational (or not), and sew up a dress! It's how people did things in the old days. Picture old time women, at home sewing dresses with their daughters, all by hand! Magnificent things come as a result of this. I find that when you spend a lot of time on a dress with hand sewing, it tends to turn out better, rather than throwing it through a machine with devours the fabric quite quickly you might make a mistake, or worst, the machine sucks in the fabric.

21'st Birthday Dress

2008-08-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

I called this my "birthday dress" because I plan on wearing it for my birthday. I often make dresses for certain occasions. Although I doubt I'll wear this on my birthday. I'll be moving to Santa Cruz on August 23rd, and I'm supposed to come home for my birthday. I doubt I'll be doing anything extravagant at home. My mom asked me where I wanted to go, and I said Red Lobster. I've been going there for my birthday since I was a kid, and I liked it because they had seafood. I really like fish and especially shrimp! I like shrimp so much, that I had this idea for "food fashion" where I designed clothes inspired by food, I had to make a shrimp one! Click here to see my sketch. Anyway, I wouldn't feel comfortable wearing this dress (the one pictured above) at Red Lobster. I just might drop a popcorn shrimp on top!

Anyway, let me explain the construction of this dress. This one is entirely sewn by hand, no sewing machine touched any part of this dress. The shell of this dress is made of knit fabric with a small pink floral pattern. I usually don't like lace, but I found this really nice, possibly vintage lace, in my mother's closet. There was so much of it that I wanted to cover a dress with it. So that's what I did!

Fan Dress

2008-08-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

Model: Lilia Sandoval

Photographer: Michael Kusuda

Shirt has appliqued fans, satin skirt pleats all the way around.

Velvet Balls

2008-08-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

Model: Vicky Miselis
Photographer: Michael Kusuda

Purple velvet balls everywhere!

Cone Dress

2008-08-11T11:29:00.001-07:00

Model: Kristi Lyon

Photographer: Michael Kusuda

Skirt is made up of cones all the way around, lined with purple fabric.

Braid Dress

2008-08-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

Model: Alexa Burrell
Photographer: Michael Kusuda

It's a giant red braid! It wraps around to the back also.

Red Rose

2008-08-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

Model: Sylvia Black
Photographer: Michael Kusuda

The top is made of craft felt, which allowed me to do this wavy, flowery applique. I liked the idea of a see-through skirt, so I did that.

Kydex Dress

2008-08-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

Model: Emily Stabile
Photographer: Alex Zamora

This dress is decorated with kydex blobs. Kydex is a thermoplastic sheet, which is basically plastic that you can warm up and mold it into any shape. My sisters helped me make these blobs. At home, I cut circles from kydex, and my sisters and I stood around the stove with pliers, holding the kydex circles. We warmed them over a stove burner, and then pushed the middle of the circle into the mouth of jars to create a wavy, curved shape.

More photos, by Michael Kusuda:

Up Close:

Some of them look like fortune cookies!

Stuffed Bows

2008-08-11T10:20:00.001-07:00

Model: Marya Long
Photographer: Alex Zamora
Makeup: Lilia Sandoval

My silly obsession with bows produced this dress. The design originated as a green jumpsuit with a very large bow in the back, to be like wings. Instead, I created this! It's supposed to be cartoon-like, so laugh!

Pink Bow

2008-08-11T10:09:00.001-07:00

Model: Krystal Garcia
Photographer: Alex Zamora, Michael Kusuda
Makeup: Michael Kusuda

I love bows, so I wanted to make something with a giant floppy bow on it. My aesthetic seems to lean towards assymetry, so rather than placing things in the middle, I wanted to put the bow on the shoulder. The top for this outfit is fitted in the front, but in the back it's loose and baggy. It looks sort of like the wings of a ladybug when it's wings are closed. As for the skirt, I wanted to create a design in contrasting colors, and practice my applique technique!

And Krystal was so cute!

This is me, by the way

2008-08-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

This is me, by the way. I guess I'm kind of funky.

1920's Japones Dress

2008-08-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

Model: Julie Roth
Photographer: Michael Kusuda
Makeup: Lilia Sandoval
Inspiration: 20's gowns, 20's orient inspired colors and shape.

This dress was my final piece for Queer Fashion Show 2008 at UC Santa Cruz, held in the Porter College dining hall.

The dress is almost completely handsewn, except for the grey train. The black bodice and skirt is made from black satin cotton and silk blend, with large pintucks at the waist. The pink overskirt is made from 100% silk, and is draped in a way reminiscent of the 20's. The orange train is also 100% silk with red crochet blossoms appliqued onto it. Another detail that cannot be seen from the photo is that the grey train is beaded at the bottom edge with black glass beads. The red bow at the back, holding the train is made of silk and cotton blend.

I absolutely love the 20's!

my portfolio

2008-07-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

my name is felicia tabing, and i like to sew. i am also a mathematics student

please visit my portfolio, with fashion things and other stuff too. comments are very welcome!