Ann Williamson

Handmade Designer Women's Apparel

kimono silk

Looking towards Baltimore

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It’s coming up! The ACC Baltimore Craft Show, with its new name, American Craft Made.

I am buried in my happy place. Kimono silks flying, ideas bubbling, sewing machine buzzing, zeroing in and focusing on new work.

Such as this pieced trench coat. All in blue and white kimono silks from leftovers of previous projects.

The back.

But wait! Before I focus completely on new pieces for Baltimore. I want to take a last look at a couple of jackets that found their way to their new homes.

Like this pieced jacket in bright colors set off with white. A few weeks ago I posted this one in process. All the fabrics are from my never ending piles of leftover scraps. No new silk was cut for this jacket.

Actually, it’s a theme for this whole post. These three jackets are all from remainders. Fabric pieces from previous projects.

The back.

This one was also sent off to its new home, sewn from the last bits of this gorgeous brocade, a red and gold kimono silk with peacocks and peonies.

And the back,

From now on, all my new work will be for the Baltimore show. It’s the first weekend in March. That will be March 3-5.

Can’t wait!

New Skirt and Jacket

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My left over pieces of kimono silk are too beautiful, too amazing, too gorgeous to throw out.

Especially the bits and pieces of meisen silk. Meisen, a fabric that is woven, printed with a design, then unwoven, and then, rewoven again.

Yep, rewoven.

When it is rewoven, the threads do not line up back to the way they were. The printed design looks soft and out of focus.

My scraps and leftover bits pile up until I have enough for a new project. This time it was a full skirt with a matching jacket. It’s is all meisen, mostly in black and white with bits of red and, for a little extra, navy blue.

A detail shot. It’s not an out of focus photo, it’s the fabric.

I build my full skirts in sections, piecing each panel, one at a time, until I have 16.

Here they are, laid out on my floor, ready to be sewn together. There’s not enough room to lay it out into a full circle, so I spread it out into a giant ‘U’ shape and remember that the two sides will be next to each other in the final version.

A close up of the jacket. They wasn’t quite enough of the ‘dotted’ fabric, so I added in the stripe, sort of like a peplum.

This skirt and jacket, lots of scarves, other jackets and tops are listed in my web-shop.

Check them out here.

Two New Coats and How They Came to be

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People ask, “Where do your idea come from?”

Sometimes they are from something I made before and wanted to do again, only in a different way.

For example, I’d been wanting to revisit this piece I had made years ago. It was a white on white wrap top. Sewn from a matte silk crepe and appliquéd with satin bias tubes.

I liked the subtle textural contrasts and have been wanting to do something like it again.

This time, instead of concentric spiral shapes, I decided to do something with more energy. In my pile of old drawings, I found a sketch of a skirt with scribbly, graffiti shapes.

I went with a gorgeous tomato red kimono silk for the base and used a slightly redder, shinier fabric for the appliqués.

Below, in process, pinned and ready for basting. The back and sleeves have the same designs.

Now it’s in my hand-work queue.

Stay tuned.

Another coat, from over a year ago, made with the fabric below. I was surprised to discover that the Japanese weavers wove the plaid in a random, totally laissez-faire way. It is not at all what I think of as ‘plaid,’ where all the stripes are the same distance apart and you can line them up so ‘the plaid matches.’

I laid out sections of the fabric next to each other and in most areas there was no way to line it up. It was one step from impossible to match the plaid. Can you see how the horizontal lines are close at the top, then shift so much that they are completely out of alignment at the bottom?

Although I had to go through the whole bolt, I was able to find enough areas to at least, kind of, match the plaid.

Below, the front of the finished coat.

I didn’t even try to get the sleeves to line up. If I had, my head would have exploded. But, I did manage to line up the sides and pocket pieces so they were close enough.

After I finished that coat, I thought, I’ll use the rest of the fabric and make another piece where absolutely nothing lines up. I’ll work with the uneven, totally random, ‘plaid-like’ fabric. Everything will be totally out of order and it will become a piece about a plaid that absolutely does not even try to line up.

On my wall, in process.

Below, Finished!

Nothing lines up and it is not supposed to.

One last thing, as requested and in order to make my blog more readable, we’ve adjusted the font so it is darker and thicker. After all, my whole goal here is to tell my stories. Legibility is definitely the way to go!