Altered Prom Dress

The 1950's formal I altered for Clare for her prom.  I added ribbons under the dress so that it could be hitched up giving it more form, then added an underskirt with tulle so that it would be poofy.  To break up the color I added a velvet belt with on of my vintage brooches, the colors in the brooch compliment the dress beautifully: smokey quartz, quartz, blue topaz, and silver.

A few more brooches

Brooch No. 1 Whirlwind Series

Sew the Wind and Reap the Whirlwind!

Brooch No. 1

Above: front of brooch painted silk dupioni, wool batting Below: painted silk dupioni

And it may well be my last one at that! I've been seeing all of these lovely hand made brooches from assorted scrap fabrics and thought I'd make one for myself, well... Lets just say I need a new bobbin race for my Janome 6500 now! The bobbin thread got tangled somehow with the tension arm on the bobbin race and is now broken! Luckily I had another bobbin race on hand to finish the top stitching but it's my spare for bobbin stitching with chunky threads. I'm hoping the bobbin race can be repaired as these parts are not exactly cheap these days.