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This past Friday was National Donut Day! Because I'm pretty much a crazy person, I decided to create not one but TWO dresses for the occasion (the extremes I will go to to avoid cleaning my house HAS NO BOUNDS, PEOPLE). The first dress I made was an ode to Krispie Kreme. This here dress was dedicated to all the other fabulous donut joints out there!
I decided to pair my dress with the Donut Hat (er, fascinator?) that I created a couple of years ago at a workshop. I started the dress at about 11:30pm on Thursday night. I'm a total night owl and it gets really out of hand during my summer vacation time!
I used my easiest dress pattern that I've repeated both here and here. I love this dress pattern because it really just involves to pattern pieces (not including the two straps): the bodice and the skirt! It's a vintage Vogue pattern, number 8571. When looking for vintage patterns, your best bet is eBay or etsy. Using the sewing pattern number makes the search a lot easier.
I decided to opt out of the waist tie (I did that here) and just wear my big ole pink belt. I did go with a circle skirt (like I did here) which took me a bit longer. I didn't have enough fabric so I had to do some "tasteful additions" to one of the back panels. I'm not telling you which one, I'll let you see if you can figure it out!
With the pattern pieces cut the night before, I got up at 7am and started sewing. This dress took me until 11am to complete...not bad, I don't think! Adding pockets and hemming that beast of a circle skirt did slow me down some but I was happy with my time. Then I had to bust it to wear both dresses to all my donut stops!
After hitting Krispie Kreme in my KK dress, where I picked up donuts for our school's custodial staff (and any other takers in the building!), I did a quick change into this number. These photos were shot by me with my self-timer right outside my art room door. Then I was off to Dunkin'!
So it turns out that Dunkin wasn't giving away free donuts...you had to buy a drink before you got a freebie. I bought a dozen donuts from there to take to my school's central office where the big wigs work. I work in a very small school district of just 8 schools and we're like family. It just so happens that they are less than a half mile down the road from Dunkin so it totally worked out. Everyone was so excited to get a donut and see my wild ensemble that it totally made my day. But they didn't eat all the donuts, I still had half a dozen left!
I remembered I had some banking to do which is also just down the road. I popped in there and delivered donuts to those hard workin' folks at the bank. Our bank is next door to our post office, right in downtown Franklin, so I popped in there too and delivered the rest of the donuts. Y'all. Folks were so stinkin' happy and excited...this was such a fun day! Who knew dressing crazy and giving away free sweets was so much fun? I really need to do it more often!
So I've been a-thunkin' about this for sometime: my wardrobe is missing something. The prob? I don't have a whole lotta real estate left on this here head-to-toe o' mine to bespangle any further. From the dresses I stitch to the shoes I paint, I've pretty much got the crazily-dressed territory covered. However, there is one last bit of unchartered territory that could use a lil bit of panache: the top o' my noggin. Therefore, when I heard that my fave local art museum, the Frist Center for Visual Arts, was offering a hat making class, I jumped at the chance. Best part: a whole bunch of other art teacherin' buds decided to join the fun as well. Cuz nothin' keeps craziness crazy like good company, know what I'm sprayin'?
And, ya gotta admit, this here hat is pretty cray. As if you'd expect anything less coming to this here blog, amiright?!
I gotta tell you, the best part of the class was our instructor, Mark Sloniker. I mean, look at these hats of his! I think we were separated at birth as these are my kind of awesome sauce. Mark was so kind to walk us through just how each of these masterpieces were created. I love it when an artist is transparent with their thought and creative processes, aren't you? I love that Mark is a self-taught hat maker as that made us all feel at ease with our novice hat-making skills. It also opened us up to endless possibilities.
I had one idea for a hat coming in to the class but when I saw Mark's hats, I was inspired to go much more fun and funky with my look. His creations totally put me in the mind of Wayne Thiebald so I decided to create a hat dedicated to him!
I love Thiebald's yummy looking works of art and I've never introduced his awesomeness to my students. What better time than the end of the year, right? In fact, tomorrow morning I'm popping over to Dunkin Donuts to scoop up some still life goodness for my students to work from. I can't wait to see their faces during art tomorrow! More on that later this week.
Of course, Peter Anton has some super yummy sculptures as well. I think he'll be a fun tie-in as well. And you better believe I toooootally just ordered some donut themed fabric for a brand new dress, y'all. Any excuse to buy fabric, kids. It's a disease, I tell ya.
Oh! Here's a snap of Mark talking us through his hats. We all cheered when we found out were got to keep our mannequin heads...it's the little things, y'all.
So I decided to create my hat around the platform of a headband. I created the "plate" for my donuts out of stiffened felt (found at craft stores) with a pattern of ribbon glued to it. A ribbon trim was added to the edge of the plate (by my friend Crystal. Thanks, buddy!). In the bottom of the photo you can see my three stitched and stuffed donuts in the making.
Meanwhile, everyone else was also hard at work. I love the messy creativeness of each artist's work space.
Once all of my donuts were decorated (my fave part) and complete, I was ready to begin assembling. My initial thought was to simply glue the donuts to the plate and attach to the headband. But when Mark suggested that I make the donuts look like they were flying off my head, I was sold. This required some sculptural skills on my part which I seriously lack. With Mark's help, he showed me how simply it was. Here's what I did: I glued a piece of aluminum wire to the headband. Then I wrapped the headband in ribbon to hide the wire. I cut a small slit in the plate and slid it down the protruding wire. Each donut also received a small cut at the top and bottom and were also slid down the wire.
This may or may not have been when I was trying to sweet talk Mark into finishing my hat for me. I'm tooootally one of those "can you do it for meeeee" students, y'all. P.S. check out my super cute friend Crystal in her palette hat!
So, if you can imagine, there's a wire coming from the headband up through the plate and all three donuts. Faux strawberries and a wee doily were added to balance out all that donut-y goodness.
Meanwhile, all my buddies were making totally classy and sophisticated hats. Some of 'em even managed to make two hats in the time it took me to create one. In fact, I was the very last hat maker to finish with my buds Virginia (seen above in the peacock feather hat) and Crystal (seen above the flowery palette hat) helping me along the way. Thanks, ladies!
Here are just a handful of the finished masterpieces that were created that day. I love them all! And I'm so stoked to introduce hat making to my students. I just wish we had the time to do so this school year.
I did wear my hat today and the kids loved it. My head, however, did not. I brought Mannequin Mary to art so she could wear it when I could not.
So what does one wear with a donut hat? A pink gingham number with Frankenstein green tights, of course! That is, until a donut dress is created. I'll be back later this week to share those donut masterpieces my kids will hopefully complete. I'm off: Time to Make the Donuts, y'all!
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