Cra-zy Month, Part 1

I think I'm going to wait to title this post until I figure out what my theme is.  I had no idea it had been this long since I last posted; it's not that I was taking a break from it, just that I had enough client work over the last month to choke a horse and didn't even have time to clean the house properly, cook a decent meal, and attend more than a few meetings.  If you were directly affected by any of the above, my profuse apologies.  If you were indirectly affected by any of the above, hopefully this post will sate your curiosity about why the long absence.  (And if you really don't care one way or the other, you're welcome to read on anyway.  Just sayin'.)

I got an email about a month ago from an enterprising young lady that lives nearby (that's Huntington Beach, for those of you out-of-towners), asking if I were still interested in doing some work for her.  Truth be told, I didn't even remember responding to her ad.  Turns out, I had - about a year ago.  She had kept my name on file all this time, and when her customer made a repeat request for the caftans she made last year, she shot me an email to see if I could work it into my schedule.  40 garments total, with about a two-week turnaround time.  That's more garments than I've ever churned out in such a short space of time!  I also got a call from a neighbor who knew someone looking for a seamstress to help him out with a prototype project for sales samples.  That turned out to be an order of about 9 garments on top of the other 40 - and they came straight from the patternmaker - completely original patterns, custom drafted - what a learning process that has been.  So now, I have access to a patternmaker who was a complete whiz at putting these together and making them work.  Perfectly.  I SO want to study with this gal - she teaches at FIDM in Los Angeles, but has a studio in Artesia (http://taylorslacebridal.com/index.htm).  Not only is she amazingly adept at drafting custom garments, she also sews and tailors beautiful couture dresses.  'Scuse me while I go wipe the drool off my chin.  Unfortunately, FIDM won't let someone like me just come in and take a random class or two - you have to sign up for the whole two years' of study, or nada.  So I'm hoping that this lady can do what SHE'S hoping to do - teach patternmaking classes out of her own studio.  I told her I'd be first in line at the door.

Some of the nearly 50 garments that came out of my studio this month:

Stacks and stacks of finished caftans & crop tops.

Cream caftan, with cream color Venetian style lace.
Totally drool-worthy.

My camera hiccuped again.  It really has something against black fabric.
This is the counterpart to the above - it really is black, my camera just
couldn't figure out how to focus on it and threw a lot of light into this shot.

The cutest trim EVAH! 

The cream colored crop top.

Cream colored caftan.

See?  It is black.  Only now, my camera couldn't figure out
what to do with all that lace.
Dorky camera.  It is a really decent one for the price, this is
the only problem I've ever had with it - photographing something black.

The crop top with the Cutest Trim EVAH.  A little pain-in-the-buttish
to sew on (because I had to sew through the petals but around the center),
but still - SO cute. 

I'll have more photos of these later on - the client had some great shots taken at her friend's house in Los Angeles that do these much better justice than my blue lady, here.

Speaking of later on, I'm going to have to post the rest of this in Part Deux tomorrow - having time off makes me want to just snuggle in with a good book and a couple of cute kitties!