Adventures in Fashion: Makin' a Thing

None of this is sewn together yet.  It's just pinned, but you can see what the Hell it's going to be. 

The idea is that I'll wear it with a white or black top of... some kind.  Starts under the boob and then goes down.  That's it.  That's all it's gonna be.

The Rest of the What I Wore Challenge and Thanksgiving

The first part of this can be found here!

The What I Wore challenge goes for thirty days.  The idea is to last a month, but a started at a weird time, so I wound up ending on Thanksgiving.  

Day 13:  This is what I was wearing once the day was done.  The shirt is one with a little picture of Kyo from Fruits Basket on the bottom right corner.  Computerrr....

For day 14, the top is a hand-me-down from my mom, cause I’m so cool.  
 

You know, I have trouble drawing my full body because I’m a tiny, too thin thing with boobs.  I automatically want to draw myself with real people proportions, but I’m just not built that way.  I have no midsection, so I’m mostly limbs.  

In fact, I read a "body positive" thing online recently telling everyone that it is impossible to be built like me.  So, don't worry kids!  You aren't a freak, but apparently I still am.
Oh well.


Day 15 was a rainbowy Jack and Sally shirt.

...I chose a month where I’m just wearing a lot of jeans, and I’m aware of how boring this is.  


Next up, PINK on Day 16!  This shirt features a skeleton magician with his rabbit companion. 

It was my birthday weekend!  That has nothing to do with this image.  
This is day 17 of the What I Wore challenge.  
…I’m gonna need to start doing different things with my hair for these in the future. 

It’s not really visible, but along with the skull covered shirt, I’m wearing a star cartilage earring and an arrow with a star as my industrial on the other side. 



What I Wore challenge, Day 18 was still my birthday weekend!  
We went to a museum, I got to play skeeball… I had a damn good time and you can read that post here! 

My hair was half up, my ears were full of earrings, I wore a dress I made (Yep!  You can read about that too!), and I even wore leggings instead of jeans.

Day 19 of the What I Wore challenge!  It was the last day of my birthday weekend, so I had a crown. 

…I feel like half my clothing items only make sense when seen in real life. 


Day 20 was covered in spikes!

Yet another presentation for Day 21 of the What I Wore challenge…
Also, I keep drawing my hair too long.  
I guess I’m just anxious for it to grow out again.

Winter happened by Day 22... 

And on Day 23, I looked grumpy due to a headache.  

Day 24 of the What I Wore challenge: I had a migraine all day, so getting out of my pink fuzzy robe and pajama pants was not a thing that was going to happen.

 It's so weird seeing these quick blog-drawings in color...

Here we have a black wrap shirt over a grey under shirt for Day 25...  And jeans.   

Day 26 was more interesting!  
"Zombie" knee highs, leggings, and a velvety dress thing that has the shoulders cut out.  
It was warm and comfy.  

Elvira tee, half striped pants, and purple fuzzy socks on Day 27 of the What I Wore challenge.

Day 28 of the 30 day What I Wore challenge.  
I consider this my Marceline outfit.  
You know, Vampire Queen from Adventure Time and all that. 

Day 29 involved a silky jacket that makes me feel like an 80's rocker.
We had Thanksgiving a day early with my parents, since it was also the first night of Hannukah.    

Day 30 was Thanksgiving.  
Hung out with Rob's family... then we hung out with Rob's family.  So much family.  I like them a lot, and I wanted to look nice.  
This dress is sort of striped in layers of fabric.  
Once again, much prettier than what I drew.    

 Whew!  That's it for that! 

Presenting Problems

I've done a lot of terrible presentations in my time.  If you ask my mother, they were all genius.  

Well, I'm not delusional.  I know what horrors I have committed, and I've decided to share some of them (the ones I remember) with you.

Sometimes, I'm fairly certain, I actually based some presentations on whatever I had around me.  

For example, I had these ridiculous slippers that looked like fuzzy muppet bird... horrible... things.  

I decided they looked a little like the guys from the Labyrinth.  

You know, the David Bowie/Jim Henson movie.  

They looked like the red bird horrible things that take their heads off and sing "Our Gang" right?  

So I did that. 

I stood up there, in front of a class, and danced in those slippers to that song.  

Yep. 

Moving on. 

The next one was also a musical, stupid ass thing.  

Simon and Garfunkel began to play with, "I am a rock, I am an island" as I moved cards which each sported a drawing of a personified rock and island respectively, illustrating the song as I went.  

It gets worse. 

You see, I loved Happy Days.  

LOVED Happy Days.  

I used to watch it right before bed as a way to tell myself what my bed time would be.  

Somehow, I managed to rope a few of my friends in... what?  

Fifth grade?  

I managed to convince them to don poodle skirts, use hula hoops, and lip sync to "Rock Around The Clock"... Which, by the way, is sung by a man.  

Some tiny little girls, lip syncing to a man voice.  

I remember being incredibly nervous.  

I don't even know why I wanted to do it at all.  

I hate going on stage for anything.  

Perhaps, part of it was that I didn't have to speak.  

A lot of my stage fright does have to do with my voice, after all.  

Along those lines... 

A mandatory stage play in the third grade meant that I got two parts.  

You know, since I didn't want any at all.   

My teacher decided I was going to be two different birds, because, and I quote, she thought I was very, "bird like"...

Having low self esteem meant that I took this to mean something about me having a beak of a nose and squawking a lot.  

I will say, my mother was brilliant here.  

She made one costume work for two by simply having a removable red chest piece. 

 During a poetry week, I recited a poem I had memorized... 

Poe's The Raven.  

I was always that kid.  

I did presentations on serial killers about a bazillion times... 

Of course, I did presentations on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as presentations on Robert Louis Stevenson himself...

Actually, that one kept getting interrupted by two rude girls right in the front of the class.  

They weren't scolded for it, but I was for stopping in order to try and get them to shut up.  

It led to a very early Deddrie strip, in fact.  

Of course, there were presentations I didn't do... 

I didn't have a Bat Mitzvah, even though I went through all the schooling for it... 

I also took ballet, jazz, and tap all at the same time. 

 

I was best at tap dancing and I liked jazz the most.  

I was terrible at ballet and I hated doing it.  

I chickened out of the recital, unfortunately after my parents had already paid for the very expensive (and very itchy) costumes.  

...I'll have to do an edit eventually once I figure out how to illustrate the Little Mermaid thing.  It was a dance with a sheer green fabric.  I was told the dance was very pretty.  

At some point, I was roped into this fish based play that I only vaguely remember at all.  

We were to make our paper costumes and then kind of hold them in front of us... somehow. 

Mine was a clown fish.  I was super happy about it.  

That isn't sarcasm.  I really wanted to be the clown fish.  

Sadly, I was seated by an idiot.  He sloppily splashed blue paint on a bit of my fish.  

I sighed, realized that once it was dry, I could just paint over it.  

The teacher's assistant saw this and decided I was in crisis.  

...

THEN I was in crisis.  

She said I shouldn't be sad and that I should just splash more blue all over the fish.  "SEE???"  

I'm still angry.  

*breathes*  

I was also in choir for a few thousand years.  

My family is known for singing, so even though I had some issues with my speech, it was assumed I would also go in front of people and sing.  

They'd give me solos without even asking me to audition, and I'd hand them over to my friends who had talent or at least a want to do this thing that everyone but me seemed to want me to do.  

Mind you, these days, it would be nice to be able to sing, play piano, play guitar and all those things.  The only thing stopping me is my own blind fear based on shit (mostly just in my head) from when I was a kid. 

I remember Cats more than anything.  

Anyone without solos couldn't wear tails.  

I wore one anyway because I had been handed a solo and my giving it up did not mean I was giving up my right to a tail.  

By my fourth and final undergraduate college, I was presenting crap like this: 

I swear this was for a fashion course.  

What I Wore and Convention Madness

I'll start this off with the first chunk of the 30 day "What I Wore" challenge... meme... thing.  

Day 1 was me dressed for a presentation.  I was nervous as all Hell, even though it was with a group.  
I still can't tell if I screwed up or not.   
Also, I love vests.

Day 2 was me being grumpy because it was Halloween, but I had class from 6-9PM and couldn't do anything fun.  
We didn't even get trick or treaters.
That pink sweater is becoming my favorite Winter item though.  
It's too big and really soft and lovely.   

Day 3 was somewhat exhausting, but in a good way.  
My household is one of introverts, so we aren't great at crowds or entertaining friends for long periods of time, even when we'd really like to do so.  
This day was me entertaining a couple friends I hadn't seen in a long time, followed by going to a loud bar to meet two of my knight's old friends.  
So.  Yeah.
The outfit was dark jeans and a neat, oddly warm top with lots of sparkly things.  I had to push up the sleeves because they are only 3/4 length and it was driving me crazy. 

Day 4...  Why did I look so unhappy?  
I had my gore pants on...  Invader Zim shirt... Comfy hoodie...
I remember.  Headache.  Headache and utter fear of my then upcoming half hour solo presentation.    
This entire semester has been utterly insane. 

Day 5 involved a Batgirl shirt and plaid pants that were given to me when a friend hit puberty and couldn't fit in them anymore. Conveniently, I'm about the size of a child.
No shoes because screw it.   

Day 6 during the day was just jeans and a black tee, since I was going to be meeting with my advisor at some point.  She had a puppy in the room because he was training to be a therapy dog.  Also, my advisor is really nice and helpful, which is new for me.  
The hanging pants are my workout pants.  ...Actually, I reversed the color of them somehow.  (Shows how often I actually workout...)  
Hitting the gym as though I’m healthy!  Yay!

Day 7 was drawn really super tiny before it was scanned in.  I have no excuse for this fact. 
Trigun shirt and blue jeans. 

Day 8! Again, full of angst. 
Again, angsty because of the half hour presentation.
On the bright side, that sweater is comfy.   

Day 9 was presentation day.  I was terrified, but I did my best to pretend I wasn't.  The teacher had a lot of discussion points and I'm still not sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.  
Was she trying to correct me?  It was mostly clarification purposes... Was I not clear?  
Does she just respect me enough to want a discourse?  
Am I going to fail?  
Questions?   

Day 10 and the drawing looks nothing like the actual top.  
The top is silky and has red, grey, and pink flowers, but it's much less simplistic.  
It ties in the back and the grey part over the cleavage is a separate under shirt, needed for obvious reasons.
The choker necklace has the sign for Scorpio. 
My clutch there is awesome because it not only has my cards, cash, whatever, but it also fits my epi-pen and chapstick. 
...The epi-pen is a little more important than the chapstick.      

Day 11 was a day I did not leave the house.  At all.  
Wore my “Cry baby” shirt and drank tea from one of my tiki mugs.
My chair (from my knight's sister) is actually much more awesome than what I drew. 

Aaaand day 12, which was today.  
Again, I'll be doing this for 30 days, but I figured I'd stop and do a post here because today was a convention and I wanted to mention that I went.  
The comic I worked on wasn't quite ready to show yet, but it'll be at the next one!  
Here, I'm dressed as Cassie Hack from Hack/Slash.  

My knight was dressed as Vlad, so he bought a plain mask, I built Vlad's mask on top of it...

and then my knight painted it. 

That's my lap.  

We didn't stay long at at this convention just because the three of us (the other one was Deadpool, by the way) were all kind of peopled out by the time we got there.  

Still, we saw some friends, looked at a lot of stuff, and managed not to buy anything. 
I also learned that in or out of costume I'm terrible at recognizing anyone I know.  

I can tell what character he or she may be dressed as, but I won't know where I know the person him or herself from, let alone his or her name.  
I'm memorable, as are the other two of this household, so this can be an issue. 

Last time we went to this convention was memorable due to 11 leftover House of the Dead credits someone had walked away from while playing.  

Knight and I took over. 

Turns out that my aim isn't bad, but I'll automatically shoot anything that moves.  
As I result I one shot...  

...two of the scientists. 

BUT I killed a lot of zombies too.  

Greater good and all that, right? 

Dress Number Two!

For the first dress, I was learning how to properly use a pattern (and making shit up on the fly anyway)...  
So, for the second dress, it was all about altering a known pattern into a slightly different dress, and also using a different kind of fabric. 

The basic shape of the neckline started the same as the first dress, for example: 

Then, I wanted to see if I could add a cowl-neck.  I made up how I was going to do it, so... THAT was interesting:

 Instead of long sleeves in three pieces, this has capped sleeves:

Finally, I think the biggest change to the design was the bottom.  I cut it a little higher on the sides, and let it drop to a point a little lower: 

I'm still working on the way the stitches should look.  I'll admit, Mom helped me a lot with the machine.  

  
After many days of working a bit, stopping, questioning everything in my life, and then starting again, this is the final product: 

EDIT: The cowl neck is actually much cleaner looking now than it is in these photos. 

If I ever get around to doing a third dress, it will be time to learn how to make a pattern.  
In fact, I don't think I'd start with a dress there.  

That seems...  No.  

I'll make something small so that I can figure out how to design and cut flat pieces to build a three dimensional, wearable object. 

That might not be for a while though.  This coming semester is over filled with not-so-simple classes, and one class too many.  

Also, I might be moving yet again, which would be awesome.  It would also take up A LOT of time.  Time is a thing I will not have this semester.  

However, the hope is that in a better, safer environment, I'll get more work done more often.  

Fingers crossed!  

Lastly, a reminder that the Etsy site is up!

Also, the Deddrie site is... up?  But there is nothing currently there.  
We (Rob) are figuring it out.  We still have everything saved, so no worries there.  I'll keep you all posted. 

Meanwhile, my portfolio site IS up and running at RowynGolde.com. 

Drawings and commission info is not yet up, but prints and commissions are available.  That will be more apparent soon.  

For now, you can email me at deddrie@gmail.com for a specific question or commission.