Tien Chiu

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January 1, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Full speed ahead

I thought things over in the last day or two, and I think Daryl’s right: catch your rabbit first, then decide whether you want to eat it.  So I will try to get the dress ready for entry to the fashion show, which means getting it photographable by Feb 15.

This means finishing weaving the wedding-dress fabric, weaving the double-happiness ribbon, and sewing the dress.  The coat will require 16-20 finished yards of fabric, which with 12.5% shrinkage translates to 18-23 yards of woven fabric.  I’ve woven 6 yards so far, so I’d need to weave another 12-17 yards of fabric at about 2.5-3 hours per yard.  That’s about 30-60 hours of work.  The double-happiness ribbon should go pretty quickly, since it’s a narrow piece in thicker yarn, and I only need to weave 2-4 yards.  Figure another 10-15 hours.  That totals about 45-75 hours of work.

The challenge, of course, is that I’m trying to get all this done in approximately 4 weeks, to give myself 2 weeks to sew the dress.  So that’s basically 12-20 hours a week for four weeks, in addition to a full-time job.

I think it’s do-able, but it will be pretty tight.

Meanwhile, I have worked through the first 100 pages or so of the Photoshop book; only 600 to go.  Hopefully I should be able to skim through most of it by the time I get home.  (I won’t be able to read through carefully, but at least I can muddle through.)

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: wedding dress

Previous post: More waffling
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Comments

  1. Laritza says

    January 1, 2010 at 4:04 pm

    Tien:
    I know you can do it. But I really think you are better off taking it easy and weaving and sewing slower. The goal for the dress and the coat is the wedding. Why not take your time, do a good job, enjoy the process AND enter the dress for Convergence in two years?
    Enjoy the process girl, this outfit will only be there ONCE to weave and sew. Don’t race against yourself, life is too precious to get burnt by it.
    Just my 2 cents

  2. Karen says

    January 2, 2010 at 3:11 pm

    I think you should be the 1st person to wear your wedding dress. not some model at convergence. I second the idea of sending the dress to the next convergence after you have been the 1st to wear the dress. Just my 2 cents as well.

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