September Dress for Project Dress Up 2010

For September, I thought it was a bit early to be thinking about autumn, but then I realized it made good sense, since everything is brown and dying in my part of the world.

This dress was fraught with peril from the beginning. I first cut the skirt out of two pieces of orange scrapbook paper, and the top out of contrasting, but color coordinated leaf pattern scrapbook paper. Then I proceeded to lose the skirt pieces. My mind was not on my task, and we all know that art takes concentration. So to improvise, I painted a piece of cardstock using a cheap orange acrylic. When nearly dry, I brushed Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold fluid acrylic over the top to tone down the orange. When dry, I cut the skirt and began the assembly. I was not about to put the pieces down again.

Before assembling the two sides, I added the leaves to the front and back of the skirt using E6000.

Next I made the hanger (probably more difficult to make than the dress). I measured the shoulders to get a good fit on the hanger and sewed the pieces together. Then I added the hanger to the top and glued the top to the bottom. When the glue was dry, I sewed the skirt for good measure. To finish it off, I used a tiny paint brush and filled in any white cardstock that showed and covered the black thread.

If you have just found my blog and wonder what Project Dress-Up 2010 is all about, please visit Margaret at Alice and Camilla, our hostess for this year long project. You will find links to September's and all previous month's participants. I keep wondering if Margaret knew what she started way back in January when she proposed and started this project. I'm just glad she did.