What the Art Teacher Wore #33

Purple Tuesday: Can you find what's wrong in this picture? How about my dress...notice anything unusual? When I was getting dressed Tuesday morning, I foolishly tugged on a little loose string at the bottom of my dress. Once at school, someone pointed out that my hem was coming undone (after I'd snapped this photo). Geez, I wonder why.  A work buddy helped me tape that hem back into place. You get to know someone really well when you lift up the tail end of your skirt in front of 'em. dress: Anthropologie, new with tags, my favorite Goodwill score to date; shoes: John Fluevog

Well, Happy End of the Week to you, kids! I totally enjoyed having last Monday off in celebration of Labor Day. Did you notice there wasn't an outfit photo for Monday? Yeah, I bounced between four different looks that day: pajamas, exercise clothes, yard working clothes and back to pajamas. Thought I'd spare you.

So included in this short What I Wore this Week is one of my favorite fabric designers: Florence Broadhurst. Because I'm toying with the idea of creating my own fabric, I've been pouring over the designs of some of my faves. My bedside table currently has a stack of fabric design books and Florence is at the top of the pile. If you've not heard of her, I highly recommend Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives.

Florence Broadhurst in her Paddington (an eastern suburb of Sydney, Australia) wallpaper design studio, early 1970's. Her vibrant and outlandish designs were a complete reflection of her character. All images pulled from pinterest.

Florence lived more lives than a cat. Born in 1899, she grew into adulthood during the roaring '20's. In full flapper garb, she toured Southeast Asian and China in various singing and comedy troupes. In her later designs, the influence of Asian art is strong.

Brown Wednesday: That's right, we are still wearing colors this week with kindergarten. This totally helped me get dressed in the mornings...although I've missed wearing my Frenchy-themed garb. dress: vintage, picked up at an antique store in high school; shoes: Frye

Always the entrepreneur, Florence established The Broadhurst Academy where she taught voice and instrument lessons in Shanghai. From there she moved on to England where she married, divorced, remarried and had a son. When World War II hit, she volunteered to help.

One of my favorite Broadhurst designs. At her wallpaper design facility in the late 1960's and 70's, this print could have been purchased on metallic paper. This was completely revolutionary at the time.

Black and White (with a pop of color) Thursday: top: vintage, thrifted. I love it's Matisse-esque design; skirt: Target; shoes: Softee

When reading about Florence, I found that many of the 800 wallpaper designs were not actually created by her. Her eyesight was failing and the task of creating all of those designs would have been impossible.  So she hired graduates from local art schools to come work for her. Some of  their designs she would claim to be her own. For photo ops like the one above, the palette and the brushes where simply props.

That's not to say she didn't have a heavy hand in the direction of the designs. This is another one of my faves.

Wear Your Favorite Color Day: Turquoise! dress: vintage, thrifted; belt: gift from a friend (thank you, Anna!); shoes: Anthropologie

Florence with all of the designs created in her studio. I love her vibrant fashion sense (dyed bright red hair, oh yeah!), even well into her 70's. She was known among her friends for her flamboyant style. Sadly she was murdered outside of her studio in 1977. Her murderer was never found and the reason is still a mystery.

Regardless, her designs are such an inspiration. I find them to be so beautiful and modern looking. Have you heard of Florence Broadhurst? Do you have a fave fabric designer?

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy your upcoming week. Mine is going to be spook-tacular! More details soon.

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DIY: The Embroidered Eiffel Dress

Bonjour, ya'll! 

As you might have guessed from my art room windows and my French poodle dress, I'm on a bit of a Parisian kick. I finished the embroidery for this dress during our last couple of road trips and, despite a wee bit of a disagreement between the hubs and myself (which I'm going to need your help settling), I'm excited with how it turned out. Especially since it began it's life looking like this...

This little hook in my sewing room usually holds half a dozen of work-in-progress, in-need-of-TLC, please-iron-yesterday dresses. I moved the mound so you could focus on this little bitty dress.

I spotted this dress at Goodwill. I recall this style from a couple years ago, you know, that elastic-waist-band-thing. Most of the tops of these dresses where usually tanks, which I never cared for. The sweet yellow blouse is what drew me to this dress. It's tragic flaw was the fact that the skirt was, like, 14" in length which is just a wee bit of a problem for this never-shave-above-the-knee-caps gal.

I began by letting out the hem and removing the pockets. I found this formerly-a-curtain vintage floral fabric in my stash and decided it would look lovely at the bottom of my dress. I had this idea that I wanted it to look like I was walking through a flower garden. Or being eaten alive by vintage fabric. Which, with my hoarder ways, the latter is more likely the case.

Before adding the vintage fabric to the skirt, I hemmed it and created a circle of fabric that was the same circumference as the bottom of the dress. Then I pinned it to the dress and appliqued stitched around  the edge of the flowers. Once that was complete, I had the super duper fun pleasure of trimming all of the excess fabric off the top. I managed to cut into the skirt accidentally only once...which I promptly patched after saying a few naughty words and throwing a couple of things.

Hubs and I have been enjoying some road trippin' during his time off. My favorite car-traveling craft is embroidery. I've worked on my Naughty Nautical Girls dress, my Pin-up Cowgirls dress and my Presley Poodle all while on the road.

Can you guess my inspiration for the dress? You know I love to go all Miss Frizzle what with my clothes matching my teaching unit. I drew out a sketch of the Eiffel Tower on paper, traced it with a Sharpie, pinned that drawing under my dress and (gasp!) drew the tower onto my dress in pencil before embroidering the Eiffel.

Aw, look at young Brigette Bardot in front of the Eiffel Tower wearing what looks to be a vintage Snuggie. This is actually the hair do I was aspiring to. With flowers, of course.

Okay, remember that disagreement between the hubs and myself? Well, I think I needed to add something to the top, to balance out the dress. My idea is to applique some of the flowers onto the left side of the blouse, as seen in the photo on the left (if you click on the photo, I think you'll get a better look). 

Hubs seems to think I need to leave it alone as seen in the photo on the right. I say it's too "business on the top, Parisian party on the bottom". He says I have a habit to taking things to another (read tacky-er) level.

So, dear reader, what do you think? I'd love to hear your input in the poll at the top of this post on the right (which took me far too long to figure out how to install!)...and a comment if you have the time. Thanks for playing!

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DIY: Anthropologie Style

Dress: thrifted Issac Mizrahi for Target, anthropologie-ized by me; belt and hair clip: by me

Tell me if you do this: you go to Anthropologie determined that you are going to avoid the full retail at all cost and head straight to the sale room. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, you are on one cheap-o mission.

And then, you see It. That dress. The One and Only. The Dress that would complete You.

The Anthro version. On sale this time last year.

And you think to yourself, "you know what, forget the sale room, I've earned this! I've worked hard, I've earned my keep, I watched someone pick his nose AND eat it today. I don't care what the price tag says, that dress will be mine. It belongs in my closet!"

And then you do it.

You look at the price tag.

And the back pedaling begins.

"You know what, I don't really even like that dress.

"I mean, look at it...it's just too perfect. And awesome. Not to mention amazing. Why on earth would I want that? Geez, what was I thinking..." And then you drive off to the nearest Target and try to forget the dress with bottles of nail polish, a tube or two of lipstick, a pair of tights and three Kit Kats...or maybe that's just me.

But this little tale has a happy DIY ending. After seeing that little navy number and being scared off by the price tag, I recalled an Isaac Mizrahi dress that I'd thrifted some time ago. Sadly, it's permanent place had become my closet as I didn't really care for the spaghetti straps. With the out-o-my-price-range dress on my mind, I anthropologie-ized my dress with some sear sucker fabric fashioned into shoulder bows...and viola! $148 still snug in my pocket book.

Anthro sandals, also from last spring.

And then I got all crazy-like and decided to try my hand at recreating these bad boys.

Ya'll would you please get yourself some of these Sseko sandals already? It's for such a great cause...and I know you are tired of hearing me yap about them!

With my favorite sandal bases by Sseko. I love that I can create custom shoes in less than a half an hour with these sandals as my base.

Please pardon the toes...they's a little gnarly.

Oh and what do you know? The sandals match the dress. I've become so stinkin' matchy-match in my old age.

There you go, an Anthro-DIY. Just for kicks, let's do a rundown on cost:

dress from Goodwill: $7.99
hair clip and belt: made by me
sandal base: $39

Total: $46.99

Yippie!

Now I know I'm not the only one that's created an Anthro-inspired DIY...what have you created? Dying to know, leave a comment below!

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