Garden Party Meeting


Summary courtesy of Holly Miner

Debbie Silva shows a sample of her ribbon embroidery, while saying a few words about her Ashton Drake design "Garden Party".
Image is courtesy of Kristan Molchin. The display was made by Reba. It is the Ashton Drake Gazebo decorated with a few garlands of flowers purchased at Beverly's fabrics. To the left is a photograph of the original "Garden Party" titled "Ibis". Trent, bouquet in hand trys to get Gene's attention.
Image by Kristan
Trent goes down on one knee and Gene appears even less interested.
Debbie Silva shows a sample of her ribbon embroidery.
Display
Trent on one knee !
Saying a few words about how she creates a piece and where she searches for ideas.
Chris's lovely sketch was one of the favors given out to members.
Kristan is a proud owner of another of Chris Quick's beautiful works, one of Kristan's favorites "Mandarin Mood".
Chris Quick during her talk.
Chris's lovely sketch was one of the favors given out to members.
Kristan is a proud owner of another of Chris Quick's beautiful works.

 


The Millbrae Public Library was the location for the "Garden Party" meeting. There were plenty of helping hands to set up the raffle table, sales tables and a fashion show runway (OK, some more tables). After everyone had arranged their wares, donated their goodies and primped their dolls, the meeting began with club announcements and meeting new comers.

With the business out of the way, Vera introduced Debbie Silva, the honored guest for the meeting. Debbie is the designer of "Garden Party" a 2001 Gene doll. Debbie achieved something very few have: her convention competition design was chosen by Ashton Drake to become a featured product in the Gene line!

Debbie loves to embroider! She showed us her beautiful jacket embellished with silk ribbon flowers. She wanted to incorporate what she love to do, silk ribbon embroidery, into her competition design. After having to redraft her pattern over and over until she got the bodice just right, she spent 100 hours embroidering the dress with hand-dyed silk ribbon. Debbie buys 100 yard spools of white ribbon then, by wrapping around plastic spool, she boils the ribbon in dye until she gets the right color. The ribbon ends up a bit variegated, which adds shading to the embroidery flowers.

Debbie is very pleased with the production outfit being produced by Ashton Drake. She thinks the perfect reproduction of her purse makes for the under sized hat. All of the embroidery on the production dress is done by machine. Debbie showed us a beautiful hand embroidered Gene shawl, to emphasize the difference between machine and hand embroidery.

As part of the program for the day, all attending received a lovely reproduction of a sketch by Chris Quick. Chris told us how she developed the sketch by first using shapes and by examining poses from glamour magazine until she found the look she wanted. Then she fine tuned the drawing, all the while keeping the focus on the costume. The result is a lovely rendition of "Garden Party".



On to the Show and Tell