Couture Lover

A few years ago I got really into fashion, it started after I began the phase every teenage girl gets at one point: the "clothes" phase. I saw so many beautiful things that I wanted to get and WEAR. I couldn't afford all these clothes, so before a party I decided to make my own dress. This was the beginning of my first love...

I also have a passion for protecting the environment so I decided that it would be even cooler if I could design my dress out of plastic recycled materials like... bubble wrap!!! So began my firs creation... I don't have any pictures but it was a blue fabric strapless dress that stopped a little above my knees. It had a bubble wrap belt and a tier of bubble wrap on the lower half of the skirt that shaped it into a bell design. On the bodice I placed bits and pieces of bubble wrap to complete the image. And I finished off the outfit with a little drawstring purse made of bubble wrap and the same blue fabric used in the dress. I didn't have a sewing machine at this point so I sewed it all by hand.

For the record, I didn't use a design, or at least I meant not to. When working on the bodice I had to borrow my friend's sewing machine just to make sure the stitching would rip (the would be embarrassing!) and her mother got uptight because I wasn't using a pattern and she made me change my own design to fit the pattern she gave me. Which, in turn screwed up the whole design of the dress.

At the party all my friends kept popping the bubble wrap on the dress ^_^ lol

After this, I felt proud of myself for accomplishing something that I thought was worth doing, and I began to be more and more interested in the fashion world. After this, I designed another two collections and showed them in two eco-fashion shows (one that was organized by me and the rest of the student council at my school). The quirky thing that got a lot of people interested in my work was the fact that my dresses and other clothing items were made out of... wait for it... garbage bags!!!

I had a good run, but this past year I couldn't manage to get my designs to work and after enough frustration I gave up and I haven't made anything new for months. I was never taught the proper way to design clothes so taking a class might help me a lot... But a few weeks ago I realized something else, I never actually followed the patterns I made while sewing. I would also make a small change here or a bigger change there. So, maybe if I actually followed my pattern for once I could make it work! I just wish I had more time to work on sewing and my designs...