Studio Davina

One of my frequently asked questions is, “How do you come up with ideas?” Well, the truth is that I am constantly filling my “creative pot.” Design isn’t just a single moment of inspiration. It’s a process that might begin with an indescribable eureka flash but requires a method to move from idea to a completed project.

Designing a Black Cape

One of the small projects on my plate is a black cape. My design brief was simple, a velvet and beaded lace cape or capelet that gives a Victorian or Edwardian impression. What fun! Once I had a general idea about what my client was interested in, it was time to begin my favorite stage of design, research!

Costume Research: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 

These seven black capes are all from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Their website has a searchable database of their collection. The Costume Institute houses the collections of both the Met and the Brooklyn Museums. It is one of my absolute favorite places to conduct research about historic costume. www.metmuseum.org

I simply put “black” and “cape” into the search bar and it gave me lots of examples of capes. Of course, being an art museum, it also offered me works of art featuring cape designs as well. While there’s nothing wrong with works of art, I used the advanced search features to hone the search down to garments.

Costume Research: Pinterest

No search for historical costumes would be complete without hitting my favorite image storehouse, Pinterest. What I like most about the Pinterest website is that it allows you to collect and organize images from around the web into useful pinboards that you can refer to often. You can even customize captions, making notes to yourself about the images you save.

I keep images of capes on a Pinterest board labeled “Steampunk Inspirations.” I spent some time adding a few more images to my board as I poked around the Pinterest website and then further out onto the web for examples of short black capes.

Pinterest is a free website that anyone can join and use as often or as little as you like. As a designer, I find it particularly useful for organizing visual data and storing it in the cloud for later use.

Costume Research: Books

Perhaps it’s a little old school to refer to books, but since I’ve collected a lot of costuming books over the years, I took a moment to pull some of my favorites to see if there were any images that I found particularly useful. My collection includes many exhibition guides and I really love having an excuse to pull one out and look for inspiration.

Costume Research: General Web Search

My last go-to strategy for costume research is to hit the web and do some basic searches. I could pour for hours over hundreds if not thousands of images and pages. So, to keep from falling into the research rabbit hole, I begin by making a list of search terms. I write this list down and pay attention to which terms work. When I find things I like, I pin them to my Pinterest board for future retrieval.  In case you might be wondering, I always start with Google and then move on to Bing and use the same search terms, often with different results.

But now it’s time to get on with this project!
Off to sew,
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
Friday, November 17, 2017

This month I’ve been participating in a monthly challenge on Instagram.   The #BPsewvember challenge is hosted by Australian blogger, and avid seamstress with sass, Amanda.  You can check out her fun and informative blog here.  Throughout November, her friends and fans on Instagram are joining in the fun and sharing projects based on the prompts.  

A Sence of Community

I love doing a search for the #BPsewvember hashtag and looking at all the uploads for the day and seeing what other sewists, seamstress, tailors, and costumers are sharing with the world.  We’re at the halfway point and I thought I would take a moment to do share some of my answers to this project.

Day 14 – Tricky – Have you seen wild curves as tricky as those on curves model Nicole Simone as Mae West?  I made the pattern, cut it, and with the help of some friends got this dress made.

Day 9 – Refreshments – Coffee, coffee, coffee.  I got this little emoji cup at the dollar store and used it all summer to sip my coffee from.  It’s whimsy made me smile.  Of course, I’m a bit clumsy, which is why I keep the “good cups” filled with pens!

Day 4 – Machine – I adore my workhorse, bottom-of-the-line all mechanical Bernina.  I treasure it, use it every week, and it’s the apple of my eye, the heart of my hearts.  Friends and lovers may come and go, but this machine is rock steady!

Day 11 – Sewing Buddies – I’m really enjoying the companionship of my tiny little dance troupe, Swirl who are my current enablers in the costuming department.  We sew, laugh, and dance together.  Best of all, they love assiut too!

Prompts Make me Think

I must admit I started on day 3, and I’ve missed a few here there. Perfection is not my goal.  For me, it’s the participation in the group experience.  The daily prompts really make me take a step back and think about my process, tools, space, and more. While some are easy, like machine or refreshment, other prompts take more time and a little thought. What was my most “Tricky” sewing moment?

Sharing is Caring

And once I have figured out my answer and shared it the group, then I am happy to look through other participants to see what their answers are.  It’s fun to both share my own answer, and read the answers of everyone else. If you are interested in seeing more of my posts of this challenge, come join me on Instagram!

Boy, I think image challenges are fun! 
See ya on Instagram,
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
November 15, 2017.