Bonspiel Creation

I know it's a bit painful to hear if you live on Canada's west coast, but autumn is coming.  Even though we're caught in a perpetually damp cool spring situation this year while the rest of the continent is experiencing a record heat wave, I am starting to think about fall designs.  I guess thirteen or so years of participating in the fashion design industry (albiet on the very fringe, no pun intended) has trained my brain to think a little bit ahead.  Although I still can't wrap my mind around a "cruise line" in February.

Autumn is my favorite time of year to design for.  Or, if you're the Grammar Police, "for which to design".  Tweedy, textured fabrics, earthy colors, wool and leather are very appealing after a canvas-and-light-silk summer break.  Boots come back (although they have still not gone away this summer on the West Coast).  Corduroy jackets are always fun to make.  Generally autumn feels to me like a return to some seriousness, but in a playful way.

I had a dream in early June about a really cool tea-stained looking bag made out of a wool blanket with leather trim in a peculiar shade of purply-brown.  In the dream it was on some sort of rough bench, and the scene was the Old West.  The hardware on the bag was muted and aged brass, and this bag has been on my mind ever since.  But it is definitely not a summer item.  I finally get to make it.  I went out and found an authentic, amazing Hudson's bay blanket at the thrift shop (the kind with the green, red and yellow stripes).  I'm going to experiment with dying it with tea-colored dye.  I even figured out how to age bright yellow brass hardware to a mellow patina overnight. 

If you want to know how, here's what to do:  strip off the protective laquer finish first (I used furniture stripper) and then suspend the hardware buckle or whatever over an inch of ammonia in the bottom of a jar, with the lid screwed on tight, overnight.  In the morning remove the hardware, buff a little with very fine steel wool, and voila--old crappy looking buckle, perfect for your Old West, Medieval, or Ye Olde Whenever project.

Some other new fall items that I will be producing over the next two or three months are teeny coin purses, just the right size for cards, coins and a little cash, and I'm bringing back the English Riding Hoodie as I have had some requests.  I'm thinking of making it in this great flat black stretch crepe I found.  Super Victorian looking. Here's the teeny coin purse

here's an earlier version of the English Riding Hoodie.