October 22, 2005
The House Of Not For Sale Presents The Psychedelic Leprechaun
[All images copyright Catherine King and Jerome du Bois. Do not reproduce in any form.]
by Catherine King
A few years ago, I bought a fantastic billowing, floor-length 1960's dressing gown from a now-defunct vintage clothing store here in Phoenix. I didn't want a dressing gown. It was all that fabric that I was in love with. . .
The colors of the flocked, dotted, satin shadow-striped voile are indigo, emerald green, fuschia, chartreuse, tangerine orange and white. I especially love indigo and emerald green! This was the most compelling fabric for a fabric-lover, and the inspiration for my custom made flamenco dress-- The Psychedelic Leprechaun.
The Psychedelic Leprechaun is the name I call both the printed fabric and the dress I eventually made from it. I didn't save the label when I deconstucted the dressing gown and I don't remember where in the USA it was made, by whom, or its chemical composition.
The pattern is so enchanting: a pop art field of chunky rainbows, puffy daisies, sunny, funny fried eggs, spotted mushroom caps, pimento-stuffed olives, moons eclipsing moons, rolling hills, crystal waterfalls, verdant bouncing balls and lozenges, even. And sprinkled over meadows of posies are different-colored fuzzy snowflakes. Hence, obviously, "The Psychedelic Leprechaun."
But the leprechaun's playground was too unstructured. Those chunky rainbows had long rainbow stripes flowing down from their graphic arcs. Somehow I knew that the verticality in the pattern must be emphasized, and that the wonderfull craziness of it all would be more powerfull, paradoxically, if I cut it into pieces.
We were living in the Haunted Apartment then. In spite of its cheerfull appearance, The Psychedelic Leprechaun was conceived and mostly constructed in a dark, creepy, haunted old apartment. Jerome and I made some of our finest work there, though. A LOT of our finest work.
I don't remember why I decided to make a flamenco-style dress. Probably because the fabric has plenty of polka-dots all over it. What is it about flamenco dresses and polka-dots? The linkage is so mysterious. It could be that Spanish dancing gypsies made dots out of the circular mirrors that Indian dancing gypsies used to embroider to their skirts to ward off the evil eye. The mirror was an eye reflecting it right back at you.
The Psychedelic Leprechaun is binary. It is made from circles and lines, dots and dashes, 0's and 1's. The lines- well, you can see those, can't you? The whole top part of the dress is made of straight lines. Circles? Well, those are the flounce.
See the flounce at the bottom of the dress? For those who do not know, flounce is not to be confused with ruffles. Ruffles are a single straight strip of fabric, gathered and attached at the top edge of the strip and hanging free at the bottom.
Flounce, however, is a complicated composite. Each one of the many elements of flounce is like a doughnut. Flounce is fun and challenging, and maybe I decided on a flamenco dress because I wanted to try my hands at some flounce. (I don't remember. I was haunted at the time. Probably still am.) But I do recommend making flounce for those who like to use their hands to achieve creative effects.
Picture this: You cut a bunch of perfect circles out of your desired fabric. (I would recommend no smaller than 4" diameter). Then you cut another perfect circle out of the center of that. You are making cloth doughnuts! For more fun, I made my flounce doughnuts for The Psychedelic Leprechaun of different sizes-- different sized doughnuts with different sized holes.
That was the fun part. The challenging part is: you cut a little radius opening up each doughnut. Now your doughnut has changed from a big "O" to a "C" when you stretch it open. Okay now attach your C's to each other end to end. . . Keep them spiraling in from the same direction.
Now think about all those connected circumferences of the inner doughnut holes. You are lining up all the inner circumference edges of all those flounce pieces. For every big circle of flounce you cut, you may only add 2" or 3" lateral inches of flounce. So to get your thick, accumulated ring of flounce circles, you must cut, piece and sew together very much more fabric than it takes to span around your hem.
When I ran out of doughnuts, I had six layers of flounce for the Psychedelic Leprehaun. After I sewed my doughnuts end to end, I would say my strip of flounce was almost thirty feet long. I wound my strip of flounce around a big cork bulletin board, like you buy trimming wrapped around a card at the fabric store, only ten times bigger.
I have photographs taken in the old Haunted Apartment of my Psychedelic Leprechaun in progress; distinct, luminous orbs shooting past the big, flounce-wrapped bulletin board, or floating in front of the ribbon-wrought bodice and skirt. Perhaps I'll go through my old archive and show you the pictures sometime.
It should be obvious why I chose to define the outer edges of all my flounce with ribbon piping-- the piping defines and enhances all the undulating edges. Now can't you see that THREE rows of differently colored ribbon edging lines would further define the luxury of the flounce with triple emphasis and generousity?
But why the pompoms? Well, they echo the polka dots in the fabric. They provide a carnival of movement when I wear The Psychedelic Leprechaun. And they remind me of the orbs. Actually, I think it was the orbs who gave me the fairly crazy idea of the pompoms.
Just look at the dress! It was all worth it-- every bit of the work. I don't know how many pompoms are on The Psychedelic Leprechaun. I got packages of three sizes of pompoms. Notice the micro poms? And some of them are even day-glo-- the leprechaun especially loves that! Using different colors of embroidery floss, Jerome and I strung all the pompoms on loops. I hung them on my first, top edging ribbon, then sewed down the looped poms by applying the second and third rows of ribbon edging over them.
As you can imagine, putting the flounce together got extremely complicated and confusing. Complicated and confusing, but not chaotic. There was a method to all that madness. When working with flounce-- even yards and layers of different sized, triple-trimmed and pompomed flounce-- you just stay on track and follow the spiral. Don't become disheartened. You'll make it okay.
Now my flounce was done. Onto the body of the dress. I took the remaining fabric of The Psychedelic Leprechaun and cut it into vertical strips, just 2" or 3" wide. In order to extend my fabric laterally, I decided to intersperse the strips with differently colored ribbons. I was inspired to use ribbon by a hippie seamstress I remember, who was in turn inspired by Native American fancy dance shirts.
I started the body of the dress with the bright saffron ribbon you see in the middle of the front. Working out in both directions from the center I zigzagged fabric strips next to my ribbons. Then for more complexity, I sewed contrasting ribbons on top of ribbons. All the stitchwork in The Psychedelic Leprechaun, whether by hand or machine, is both functional and decorative. So I used contrasting thread all over to show the work. Mostly I used a glorious Spring Grass Green-- just about our favorite color (the leprechaun and I).
I kept sewing ribbons and fabric strips together, side by side, until the reconstructed cloth was wide enough to wrap around me. In the middle of the back I joined the ends together with another saffron ribbon, for symmetry. Underneath that ribbon I put in a virgin vintage 21" chartreuse metal zipper that had been in my family since the 60's.
Okay, now I had a Psychedelic Tube. I angled off the shoulders and opened up armholes. Can you figure out how I tapered the Psychedelic Leprechaun to fit me so well? I couldn't contour the ribbons, so all the fitting had to be done on the fabric strips. I nipped and tucked the soft voile wherever necessary, using french seams to suit the sheer material.
But the Psychedelic Leprechaun not only had to look amazing, it had to be functional. I needed to really move, to tango in it. So in the back, above the knees, I cut and set in four godets, two on each side.
Then I cut in a perfect neckline and finished off the armholes, rolling and sewing over the edges like the borders of a scarf. Finally, the body of the Psychedelic Leprechaun was ready to be joined to the ring of flounce!
But wait. Some of the edges of the heavier grosgrain ribbon needed to be tacked down so that they laid perfectly flat. Using the glorious Spring Grass Green thread, I made ladder stiches by hand up one side of the ribbons and down the other.
I really liked the way the green ladder stiches looked --so busy, like little green fuses. I knew it would be worth the effort to do the same all over the dress. So I took another week to sprinkle green fuses over the entire worked surface of the Psychedelic Leprechaun. My excitement grew with each stitch. It just looked better and better!
Now, at last, it was time to join the two parts of the Psychedelic Leprechaun. I wore the dress while Jerome measured the hem to be exactly level to the floor. This part was really important to give the dress its extreme verticality. The flounce must be set precisely perpendicular to the ribbons. I safety pinned the heavy flounce so that the ring fit the bottom of the dress, then hand sewed them together, over and over and over.
I completed the Psychedelic Leprechaun just one day before Jerome and I went to the opera Carmen. I couldn't have been more pleased with my custom-made Outsider Haute Couture dress, and now I'm sharing it with you.
But just wait until you see the Psychedelic Leprechaun with my dark green embellished Escada bolero jacket, which looks like it was made just for my dress. Pretty soon, Jerome will take a picture of me in that ensemble and you'll be able to check it out as the new icon at the top of our Fashion sidebar.
Coming next from The House Of Not For Sale: My Gaultiqueen, wherein a Gaultier kilt and a McQueen pencil skirt get hitched.
Posted by Jerome at October 22, 2005 03:30 PM | TrackBack