I’ve just finished work on two especially fancy dresses for my 18 year old twin sisters, Katherine and Jaqueline. They are debutantes and will be coming out officially this December at a ball hosted by Miami Beach’s posh Surf Club. I toiled away for about two months on these gems, French seaming the insides which are filled with multiple layers of silk and tulle, cutting, ironing, tufting, boning, and beading petite rosettes, pleating, pinning and primping- not to mention bleeding (much!). Thank goodness the dresses are white, as this made the spots of pin pricked bloody finger prints easier to clean up! I’m also currently recuperating from a week of bed rest, as the day after I shipped the dresses to my mother, I fell into a fit of terrible pain in my lower back from stress (from getting the dresses finished in time) and too much bending over hand stitching…thus is the life of a designer who actually sews the work she designs. Despite the pains of making things by hand, I adore the act and process of creating a dress, especially ones on such grand a scale, it’s rare to have an opportunity to make something so fantastical, Scarlet O’Harah meets Marie Antoinette meets Princess Josephine. Where else BUT a debutante ball can you wear such frilly froths of a dress? I’m going to attend the event in December, three days after Christmas (in Miami’s heat no less!), and thus have to find something to wear myself, though I’m not sure if I have the energy to make something….hmm, we’ll have to wait and see. Here are a few photographs of the dresses:
