Project Handmade 2014

Last week, I had the fun of attending Project Handmade 2014 - a production of Local Cloth. Local Cloth members are small business owners who bring you original, locally handmade wearables along with functional and decorative home textiles. 

This show was lovely and interesting, but not what I would consider the typical fashion show. The garments were judged and much of the decision for "best garment" was  one that used many local and homegrown materials as well as many of the processes being done by the maker.

The models were not professional models although you would have thought as much -  they did such a beautiful job showing off the best aspects of the garments they were wearing. They walked incredibly slow, back and forth and to the center of the stage and then down into the audience - giving the viewers lots of time to view each ensemble. The above ensemble was a hand felted coat, hat and bag. It was very dramatic.

This coat was handwoven and had a very unique sleeve treatment. The dress on the right, although beautiful, didn't use as many local resources.

This same coat with a beautiful silk lining making it very dramatic.

Many of the sweaters were made from yarn spun by the artist and then knitted or woven into a garment. The garment on the left used a lot of nuno felting making it very light and airy.

This was the winning garment, incredibly simple but the sweater knitted from yarn made from sheered animals and spun into yarn. The skirt made from woven cloth created by the artist. Even the side leather panel inserts were tanned locally.

Linnie , one of the gals in our group had a great scarf which I asked her about. She said she bought this wonderful skein of textured yarn and then didn't have time to knit it into anything so created this "yarn scarf" - looked amazing and an A+ for such a clever idea.

After the show, we walked around the lobby, drank champagne and met some of the models in their creations.

Some of the artists set up booths to sell their beautiful pieces of wearable art. My favorite was the felted hat booth.

This lady on right beat me to the punch with this wonderful hat but it did look great on her. It was certainly an evening of inspiration, went home with my mind in a spin.