Story of one dress.

Making my own dresses to go to friends' weddings became sort of a tradition for me. Mainly because I hate shopping and I am way too picky to find anything that I like.  And, of course, it's a chance for a creative project. But I never felt like writing about any of them. This last dress I made though, was pretty special, so I thought I'd tell the world (the little world that surrounds me) about it.

The idea appeared out of nowhere. This lady in my illustration class brought in all kinds of fabric prints one day – cotton, silk, synthetics. All pretty good quality. So I wrote down the name of the printshop, and made a mental note that it could be useful at some point. Few days later I get a wedding invitation. Ah, I thought, here is chance to try this shop. And I came up with a plan. First, I would paint something in watercolor, then print it on silk, then make a dress. Easy! Well not really, it was pretty clear that all this was going to be a major pain, but I already got way too excited about it to turn back.

Being a web designer, I always forget how different the print world is. That everything takes longer, that you depend on things that you have no control over and that you pretty much get one shot, because you can't test and re-test 100 times. Once it's in the printer you paid for it. And if you want to redo it – you wait more and you pay more.

Well this time at least I remembered about the time factor and called the shop to find out if I even have enough time to do all this, and once I got a green light from them, I proceeded with my plan.

I had a very vague idea of what I wanted to do – haven't had any experience doing abstract art yet. And wearing a realistic painting just isn't my thing. Then I remembered our experiments in illustration class, in particular, when we used alcohol on top of watercolor.  You can kind of see what happens here. Basically when you apply rubbing alcohol to wet watercolor the pigment is pushed away, which creates pretty cool and unpredictable patterns. And so I decided to use that technique and do something simple but pretty (hopefully).

First I did some tests, practiced on small paper, figuring out the colors and pattern that I wanted and trying to understand how this alcohol really works. And came up with something like this.

Then, I got a couple of large watercolor sheets, very wide brush, 2 tubes of paint and built this contraption. 

The thing with flat watercolor washes (and that's what you see on the photo above) and especially this alcohol technique, where you have to use a lot of water, your surface needs to be at an angle, so that water nicely flows down and you just keep picking it up with each brush stroke. Thus, this built-out-whatever-I-could-find-platform.  And in theory, you get a very even flat coverage. Which didn't really happen. I blame it on the enormous scale and a little bit on the lack of experience. But, I wasn't going for a computer-like precision anyway. After all this is watercolor and it's all about chance and letting it go. Plus that was just the bottom layer, which would hardly show through. 

Then came the more important, blue layer. It turned out... alright. While not being an utter disaster, I've decided to consider the first sheet a practice one. The second sheet came out pretty well I thought. Or at least it was something I could work with. This was still just a "building block" though and looked nothing like the end result, but in my mind I knew what I had to do to make it look right. 

Then I spend some time in Photoshop adjusting colors, fixing stuff and creating the actual pattern. I even made a little dress model to help me understand better what the pattern would look like as a dress. 

Then I emailed the shop again.  And that's when I remembered why I am not into print. All of a sudden they tell me that they have a huge job running right now and they can print my dinky 3 yards a week later. Which wasn't really acceptable because the wedding was 2 weeks later and I still had to MAKE the dress. So I told them that, trying to sound as dramatic and pitiful as possible. That must've worked because the lady, also named Maria, by the way, told me just to come down to the shop, and they'd print it right then and there. 

So I went. It's a pretty cool place. Too bad I was too stressed out and forgot to take pictures. Small industrial printshop with huge printers and plotters, that are capable of printing street banners. And to get to the office you have to navigate through all that heavy machinery and get to watch people working, look at somebody's huge prints and get lost 3 times on the way. 

And this nice lady, Maria, stopped that huge job they were printing, probably for few days already – the roll of printed fabric was 3-4 inches thick. She just waited for an interval in the pattern, stopped the printer, cut that roll, loaded up my silk and sent my file to the printer.  And as it started printing she said, "consider this your test strip (which you usually get separately, couple days before the actual job), if you like it we just keep going if not – we make adjustments". So in this not so well lit room I had to decide whether I liked it or not. And if not what's wrong with it. I decided it was too dark, so she made it lighter and asked the same thing – do we keep going? I was kind of scared, it looked ok, better than previous patch, but it was dark in there and ideally I would like to see a lighter version and then maybe 5 more different variations... plus I am only seeing 5 inches – what if I don't like this as a pattern and what if, what if... but sensing an impatient gaze on my back I finally said "keep going",  and feeling a little nervous and excited went to a coffee shop to wait. An hour later I received my very own unique piece of fabric. 

Then I brought it home... and hated it. It looked cheap. Like cotton. It wasn't flowing. It was bulky, starchy, flat. It wasn't silk. It was also blue, as opposed to my original file that was more gray. 

Upset, I decided to leave it alone for a while and went to the store for a backup fabric. Then I whined about it to Max for couple days. Then I experimented with it, washed little pieces in all kinds of water, tried to bleach it, considered using the "wrong" side, and who knows what else. Finally I plucked up the courage and rinsed the whole thing. Dye started running, I was thinking, "it's going to look like a washed out newspaper... which might be a good thing?"... But then, after it dried and I ironed it, it magically became what it was supposed to be – silk. Soft, flowing, with a little bit of shine. Real, 100% crepe-de-chine.  It was all this extra dye that was stuck on top that was making it look like cotton. Once it washed away, everything fell into place. I didn't even mind the blue so much, the fact that the fabric became silky made everything better. And it didn't look washed out, I took it out of water at the right time. 

So then it was just a matter of making the actual dress and finding the right shoes. That was a bit of an ordeal too. With the dress – because I haven't touched my sewing machine in two years. And with the shoes – because the color I wanted apparently is not "in" this season. But somehow it all worked out in the end and I made it to the wedding fully dressed.

So was it worth it? I think so. It was definitely more eventful than just going shopping. Not boring, for sure. And it was a very interesting experience with the printshop that I am sure will be useful to me in the future. I will definitely recommend the shop (dpi-sf.com). However! You have to allow yourself plenty of time for your project. They're a bit flaky on the communication side, but I think that's because they're super busy all the time and have too much stuff going on. They're nice people though. And do good quality work. Just need to plan ahead. 

This is probably the longest story written about a dress, so I am wrapping up. 

P.s. btw, if anyone has a picture of me from the wedding that shows the dress well – please send it my way. Thanks.