Fiber Day Fashion Show

The Southern Highland Craft Guild always has a fashion show on Fiber Weekend. This amazing event has always been organized and run by Liz Spear.

It is held in the auditorium of the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville, NC.

Although the stage and surroundings are simple, the garments and accessories are not. This year 81 pieces were represented in the show.

Why is this so amazing you ask?....because each piece is either dyed, woven, deconstructed etc or a combination of many techniques. It is a feast for the eyes if you love fiber. The above top is handwoven...beautiful colors.

This jacket was a combination of techniques. The same models volunteer each year....who wouldn't want the chance to wear one of these beautiful garments, if only for a short time.

I loved these pants and they looked adorable on this model.

Annette is modeling a beautiful handwoven scarf/shawl which works beautifully with her black outfit.

This ensemble is a trademark look for Barbara Kazinski who dyes all her own silk for these outfits.

This oversized hand woven jacket could work on any figure type.

This magnificent long shibori dyed coat was lightweight and flowed beautifully.

A beautiful handwoven vest and

another scarf and top from Jude Stuecker. I love this gals work. Not only does she dye all her fabric, but creates her own designs to be made into silkscreens which she then screens on top. You can see some on the scart and near the shoulder of the jacket.

A beautiful top woven with hand dyed yarns...

and this lovely hand painted silk piece.

This piece incorporated the use of paper as one of the materials...so interesting and quite durable to my surprise.

This loosely woven jacket was interesting and very comfortable.

So this was my favorite, created and modeled by Vicki Bennett.....the left side (our left) is all eco printed using Eucolyptus leaves and yes they printed that color. They do print well but I've never seen that color print on fabric. The jacket was magnificent and had offers to buy it before Vicki had it off her body...As an eco printer myself (and a very "beginner" one at that) I'm always fascinated by the process and the many results you can get.

The grand finale...this is Liz's last year for doing the show and after 20 years it was time for a break. I told her, it's always good to go out when you're on top and on top she is! Liz is a great gal and puts her heart and soul into everything she does...Thank you Liz for 20 wonderful years.

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.