Leonarda.....Renaissance Woman: Baby Steps

Hi all,

I’ve been MIA. I hope you had a great weekend. I had a very ‘PENSIVE’ weekend. But it’s all good!

I’m taking a whole range of classes in school, and it’s been just wonderful! I’ll talk about them in another post. In the meantime, one of them is an “Advanced

Sewing” class and our main area of focus is “Haute Couture Techniques”.

Now, for my friends and former clients, the question would be; “What is she doing in a sewing class?”

Well, before I continue, let me address these curiosities.

- I was never ‘taught’ how to sew, everything I did was by sheer determination, curiosity, passion, persistence, stubbornness and perfectionism, but I never really learned from a teacher, from books, yes, but not in the conventional way.
- I really never actually did any sewing, that was left to the tailors and seamstresses, my job was to design, cut and supervise
- The moment you say ;”I know it all”, it’s time to die!

Ok, so how much do I love “haute Couture”? Let me count the ways!!!!! I believe every fashion designer’s dream is to design and make a couture gown. Totally hand crafted, with all the fine details of the trade. No mass production here!

Passion.

Patience.

Precision.

Throughout the semester, we’ve been learning various techniques; seam finishes, hems, dealing with very delicate fabrics- The works

We have a wonderful wonderful teacher.

Colleen Poteet. Learning from her/being taught by her is a pleasure in itself. She is passionate about the craft and passionate about teaching. She’s also such a sweet person. I feel so blessed to be in her class. I took the beginning sewing with her last semester, just out of curiosity (remember, Leonarda is a very curious animal!) and I’m so happy I did. We made a bag, a skirt and a little boy’s shirt.

Once again, I see my friends wondering….and I say again, learning is the best thing!

One can never know enough. Just ask my mentor, the great Leonardo Da Vinci himself!

The main task for the class is to design and produce the ‘best garment you’ve ever made’. For my classmates, I can see how this could be a great challenge. For me, it’s much more than a challenge, of all the hundreds, thousands of clothes I’ve designed during my 12 year career, this has to be the best. How do I top that? How do I challenge that?

This is how. The class requires 1 garment. Between me and you and me, I’m going to make seven. Yes, seven Haute Couture garments. Why? Because I need to challenge myself, my teacher won’t even know. It’s a personal thing. I may have designed thousands of garments, but I’ve never ‘designed, draped, cut and sewn from beginning to end SEVEN Couture garments. (Welcome to my ‘Renaissance!!!!’) Why seven? Well, usually, the minimum number of pieces for a collection is 12. But, 12 is quite daunting (I have only about a month left! And yes, I’m crazy!) So, I’ve settled for 7. One outfit for every day in a special week of the life of a fabulous woman like……maybe Leonarda?

One of our main areas of concentration for this class is ‘Corsets’. And so I’m building my whole collection around corsetry.

Some corsets

I’ll share my inspiration, my mood board and my sketches in a future post (still fine tuning!) but in the meantime I just want to share what I’ve been doing so far.

This is some of the fabric