Over at Pattern Revolution, Becca of Free Notion is hosting an Iron Chef inspired sewing challenge called Top Stitchers.
Is been fun reading along and seeing what the competitors did with the sewing prompts. There were a few prompts that I was inspired by but the one that really stood out for me was the Art Gallery prompt. I really liked what the competitors did with this one as well. (My favourite part of Alexis’ dress was the sash that was hand painted to look like Van Gogh’s Starry Night)
Anyway, when I read the Art Gallery prompt two things sprang to my mind. One, Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings. I was obsessed with sunflowers as a teen and especially with Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings. Later on when I was 27 I spent three weeks travelling around England and Scotland on my own and visited the National Art Gallery in London while I was there. Well, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven when I saw one of his sunflower paintings in person. … It was almost as amazing a moment for me as seeing Stonehenge in person was, but I digress… And two, hmm I digressed so much I can’t remember.. Oh yeah, late last summer I made SillyBean a dress out of beautiful Dear Stella fabric. The flowers look painted, so it fits with the theme. And Vincent Van Gogh painted lots of flowers besides sunflowers… So I’m going with it.
So to recap, this dress has nothing to do with sunflowers, looks nothing like a Van Gogh painting but for some reason reading the prompt for the Art Gallery challenge made me think of both those things and this dress.
If I had had some yellow and green fabric on hand, I may have attempted to make a sunflower inspired dress. But alas, I’m still on my self-imposed fabric buying diet. I still love this dress, and the fabric, and she still wears it quite often.
You can see more pics and details of this dress here in the original post. It’s a modified version of the Secret Garden dress pattern by Audrey & Tiffany.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to the next season of Top Stitchers and hopefully I’ll have time this time to sew up something new that fits with a theme.
