My previous blog post about Milktooth can be found here!

Although a credible representation of early 19th century life in England, Bright Star transcends the predictable parlor and pinched nose laboriousness of period pieces that have come before it.  Focusing softly on the domestics of Fanny Brawne’s day, the film slowly takes form, stitch by stitch, when the highly spirited young girl meets her pigeon-toed poet.  Their flirtation meets immediate obstacles, from the mores of contemporary society, to disapproval of the attachment by the Brawne matriarch, who fully expects her eldest daughter to marry into money,  and primarily Keat’s friend and patron, the insolent Charles Brown.   Ultimately, Keat’s lack of financial success proves to be the persistent, dog-eared obstacle that conquers the love affair, punctuated by his tragic death from consumption.

Holding aloft the ideals of Romanticism, Bright Star embraces the unconventional chasteness in the story.  The building tension of the lover’s affair validates their deepening emotional bond, elevating their love of aesthetic beauty and quite literally giving butterfly wings to their imaginations.  Such truths would be sacrificed if the relationship were ever consummated, but instead, they relinquish themselves to the sweet, dull ache of emotional love.

Bright Star is sumptuous and delicately filmed.  The lighting and colors evoke a strongly impressionistic feel.  Each moment is thoughtfully expressed to emphasize the natural lighting of the period and reflect the sub current of emotion.  A voice-over of Keats poems gently steer the peak expressions of love and melancholy while an anxious violin  and sorrowful piano soundtrack voices the character’s intense struggle to contain their feelings.  The soundtrack is mostly quiet, lightly backed with the natural noise of birds chirping and the natural surroundings.

The costuming shines bright and clear.  Fanny Brawne was a seamstress who had a penchant for style, sewing most of her own clothing and experimenting with her skills.  The recreations and original pieces made for the movie are elegant, unique and exquisitely simple, yet never misstep from the 19th century.  Both Fanny’s attitude towards personal style and the beautiful creations by costume designer Janet Patterson are a great inspiration for me.  This inspiration and the acquisition of some new fabrics have given me another direction in which to expand my skill set and dolly clothing design.

Bright Star’s haunting strength is anchored by the aim of Keat’s poetry – to love the principle beauty in all things.

Watch the International trailer.

Milktooth – by my estimation, this is fabric good enough to eat!

In addition to her many artistic endeavors, Lisa Kline is the magic maker behind Milktooth, the web design and fabric design for BlytheCon 2011, and the banner art featured on Parasol Doll! Her designs, Grrr…arrrgh! and Electronic Castaways, have each won Spoonflower design contests!

I really look forward to designing dolly dresses from Milktooth fabrics!

Stripey goodness is available now in the Parasol Doll ArtFire shop!

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The Parasol Doll Facebook page recently broke 200 fans and in celebration, I will be having a Facebook Fan Freebie!  Tomorrow, July 11, 2010, at noon Pacific Standard Time, I will take a screen shot of the PDoll Facebook page and the six people randomly featured in the “People Like This” section will each receive a $10 gift certificate for my ArtFire shop!  I will post the results on Facebook, Flickr, and blog about it.  Thank you all for being fans and good luck!

You can see more photos from my vacation in my Flickr stream!

At the moment, I am photographing and preparing a bunch of hats for the shop.  Seven new striped pixie hats and a few new colors of berets will be going up sometime tomorrow.   Missed the one you wanted or looking for a specific color combination?   I take commissions for knitted hats!

In personal dolly news, I recently acquired my second Emerald the Enchanting Witch!   Ironically, I sewed a few gift dresses for Emeralds before I owned one and have yet to sew for my own, so that will be a high priority in the next month.  I have a few ideas for the silhouettes I would like to see on them.  I love their chubby little bodies.

Any orders placed in my absence will be shipped promptly on June 30, 2010.  I will be knitting like mad, so there will be lots of pixie hats ready for sale when I return.

See you on the flip side of a week!

Last week, I had a day of FAIL.  Whilst sewing, the dress I was working on {the one that was inspired by my previous post} developed an unexplained stain.  This happens on rare occasions and usually it is a drop of machine oil.  Well, I pulled out my handy dandy stain remover pen* and proceeded to blot the offending stain.  Not only did the spot remain, but the stain remover also removed the printing from the fabric!  Doh!  I used to test it on scrap fabric every time I used it, but subconsciously ceased the precaution since I had never experienced a bad result.  Lesson learned.  I decided to forge ahead and sew on a snap because the dress was almost complete.  That is when I turned the dress over to discover that I had somehow snagged the tulle layers on something and s 5mm cleft of fabric was missing from the hem.  Out came the pinking shears and the tulle is now shorter!  That dress is a hot mess that will probably live in a box with the other castaways for the next few years.

{Insert imaginary photo here}

After the dress debacle, I decided to relax by sitting in front of the computer and indulge in the newest episode of Lie to Me while knitting.  Halfway through the show {which featured a prince charming psycho killer played by Jason Dohring, better known as Logan Echolls from Veronica Mars, the best show ever,*squee*} I am starting to unwind when the next thing I know, I am being hit in the head by the shelf formerly mounted to the wall above me and all of my dolls come crashing down on to my desk, my lap, and the floor.   Nightmare scenario.   I am very happy to report that there were no casualties and only one scare!  The eye mechanism in Arabella, my Yuki, popped out of place, but is a super easy fix, especially since she is an RBL, and actually exposed that her pull string was about to break due to a snag on the metal grommet in the back of her face plate.  I’m glad it ended well!

In more relevant news, I finished a new design!  I decided to try combining my love of over-sized dolly collars and rounded, peter pan collars into one!  Instead of having two separate sides, the collar is in one lined piece.  I’m really satisfied with the result.  The woven cotton solids used in this dress have been a great inspiration for me.  The beautiful colours are achieved by weaving two different threads together to create multi-tonal fabric that just sings.  It is really suited to dolly scale and has a lovely drape.

Crane is also wearing a Parasol Doll Diane Arbus Beret.

*Tide To Go Instant Stain Remover, not an official endorsement, heh.

Tulle, 1950′s prom dresses, kitties, mustaches, cowboy boots, over-sized collars, oh my!

*This is how the design process works in my head!  I am planning on this being a consistent feature to record and share the evolution of my inspirations into designs!

“Jillian made her own dress, including the pattern for it. She deconstructed a vintage dress to create a pattern for the bodice (the green part); sewed that, and then crocheted doilies madly for three weeks straight. She used over two miles of crochet yarn. Apparently they were still working on the dress the morning of the wedding (!) and Jillian had to be sewn into it, Project Runway style.”

Now if this dress is not inspiration worthy of motivating me to improve my crochet skills, I don’t know what is!  It also inspires me to create a skirt out of the many vintage doilies I have collected over the years.  I can practice single chaining them together!

I am pretty pleased with the combination, but I am not completely satisfied.  I still need to figure out a way to incorporate my logo into the packaging in a clever way and possibly figure out a way to speed up the packaging process.  It takes a great deal of time, measuring and precision.  It is a lot of fun to pick out the ribbons and papers to coordinate with the clothes, so it’s not all hard work!  I am going to try and print out my logo on card stock, punch it out with a big, circular punch and then thread the circular logo card on to the front of the package before tying the bow.   I am also thinking of trying cellophane bags.

There is a great deal of inspiration to be found in the packaging of other dolly artisans, too.

Diem of Tiny Haus hand carved a block print which she uses on recycled paper for the tops of her packages.  The effect is really warm and folkloric.

Getting a package from House of Pinku is an unbirthday party in package form.  Everything is pink, from the mailer, the paper header and even the bag that holds the dolly dress!