Project Runway Winning Design

This was my favorite dress from last night and I was hoping it would win. I love all the appliqueing he did and the fabric combination. If I were skinny enough, I would definitely wear it.

Re-creation of a Lavishly Embroidered 17th-century Coat

She knew it could take hundreds of people thousands of hours to do the intricate needlework, using a centuries-old embroidery stitch few people know. As if that wasn’t enough challenge, the materials needed – silver gilt threads, hand-cut sequins – had been out of production for centuries and would have to be reinvented.

The story of the jacket and the required labor is told on Nyguyen’s site Thistle-Threads on the Plimoth Plantation website.

(Via Fashion-Incubator)

Illustration and Embroidery by Naomi Ryder

Naomi Ryder is a textile designer and illustrator specializing in embroidery, drawing with stitch to create beautiful images of the everyday.  See more of her work on her website.

New Printsource Blog

Pattern People’s Jessie and Claudia will be posting entries about all things print-related; from runway collections to the world of interiors.

Christmas List is Done, Y’all

Launched at Burning ManSM as a cooperative art car project, the Cupcake Car sprang from the fevered mind of Bay Area artist Lisa Pongrace and her less-rules-more-laughs posse of artists and techno geeks.

Available where else but the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book for $25,000. I’ll take one with chocolate icing and nitrous under the hood please!

Dolce & Gabbana Printed Chiffon Dress

(Via Textile Source Blog)

A Chilly Day Like Today…

… calls for making chicken stock while I do a website re-design. I may use this in a gumbo-type thing later on.

Visual Acoustics

VISUAL ACOUSTICS celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream.

Obviously this is going on my MUST SEE list!

Swiss Style Graphic Designs

Smashing magazine has a great article on Swiss graphic design, chock full of gorgeous inspiring designs.

Emerging from the modernist and constructivist ideals, the Swiss Style can be defined as an authentic pursue for simplicity – the beauty in the underlines of a purpose, not beauty as a purpose in itself.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It goes on to make a connection between the Swiss style and usability in web design:

This style of graphic design was born in the institutional context. The majority of pieces from this movement are in the form of posters, stamps, institutional typographical identity, street signs, etc. In this sense, these artists are leveraging much more than just top-down communication, they’re creating user-friendly interfaces.

As a result of that, Swiss Style artists tend to put their artistic efforts in that the content they are conveying delivers its intended message in a clear, unobtrusive fashion. One can make the point that they were thinking, in a broader sense, about usability long before the web even existed. How can we not learn from these great masters?

The simple, beautiful design of subtraction.com

I guess it makes sense that I love the Swiss style and I’m passionate about user-friendly interfaces. Continue reading…

My New Buddy

The man in brown knocked on the door today with a package for me. It was addressed to Deron, and because he was in the bathroom he said “Hrm, I didn’t order anything from Amazon. Go ahead and open it”. Well I did, and it was obviously for me. Yay!

My new Olympus Pen EP-1

I’ve been wanting a new camera for a while but was going to wait until after I found a new full time job. Deron went ahead and got it for me as an early birthday gift. That weasel! I love him so much.