Welcome to my website, The Traveling Tiger!
Here I have shared some of my many interests - fiber arts, adventure travel, cycling, and crafts. I hope you enjoy perusing the site! If you are curious about anything, drop me a line at !
Here I have shared some of my many interests - fiber arts, adventure travel, cycling, and crafts. I hope you enjoy perusing the site! If you are curious about anything, drop me a line at !
Kodachrome was my response to the Handwoven Garment Challenge issued in early 2011. A fiesta of color, it was also my response to spending a year weaving and sewing an all-white wedding dress!
This wedding ensemble took one year and over 1000 hours of work to complete. I not only designed and wove the fabric, but also designed and sewed the dress myself, with help from Sharon Bell. There are three fabrics in this wedding ensemble – an eternity knot pattern, a Chinese double-happiness character pattern (the double-happiness character signifies a happy marriage), and a three-strand Celtic braid pattern. Together they symbolize a wish for eternal happiness in marriage!
For this project, I envisioned a long coat with autumn leaves “falling” over a background that also shaded through autumn colors. It’s been evolving continuously ever since!
A lovely garnet red/black handwoven coat, in a Celtic knotwork pattern of my own devising. Still in progress.
Remember me? Last seen throwing up hands in despair and turning to work on the lining?
Well, I’m still in a state of moderate despair, but at least I’ve figured out some of the things that were bugging me:
I’m still playing around and percolating – this weekend I plan to dye bits of many different fabrics (chiffon, organza, china silk, charmeuse) and layer, paint, silkscreen, etc. the bits until I arrive at a format I like. I may also play around a bit with polymer clay, though that is a bit less likely.
I have also been hard at work on the lining. I have thread-traced nearly all the pattern pieces, and am preparing to baste and sew. My goal is to get the lining mostly in before going up to see Sharon on Saturday afternoon. That is a tall order, but as I’m taking this afternoon off work, that should give me time to get a good stab at it.
The house offer fell through; the bank had eight offers and invited us to give our “highest and best” offer (i.e. more money). We weren’t willing to increase our offer and felt it was likely that someone else would bid higher, plus we weren’t comfortable with some of the contingencies, so we’re dropping out. A lot of stress and hurry for nothing! but, there will be other houses, and we’ll find something eventually.
Finally, because every blog post should have a pretty picture, here is one of the ideas I’ve been percolating: a cluster of three leaves at the shoulder, with one leaf drifting down. The colored swirls indicate where I’m thinking of using some embroidery to suggest movement.
I’m not wedded to this design either, but I like it better than the others so far.
Of course, in the end, I may just throw up my hands completely and send in the garment without any further embellishment. I don’t think that would be a tragedy, either.