So far, the rush of November and stillness of January, has been the time when I design for Spring. All the sketching and patterning comes together as the New Year rolls in, and, if I am really lucky, the first samples are complete by February. I will be adding several new designs to the current collection.
That's why recently I sourced some wild leathers - for the first time. Nothing truly exotic, just a small bundle of deerskin and elkskin.
Traditional tanning of deerskin leaves it with a richly coloured, velvety, matte surface, which, to the touch, feels very similar to the nubuc side of the leather. It is also subjected to very little `finishing`, leaving it extremely fluid and stretchy. Once on stabilizer, the leather takes shape well and the stitching appears quilted deep into the pliable surface.
It was just what I needed for my tasseled bag design to appear this Spring. I wanted a softer and modernized take on a traditional Western look, suitable for day and night....
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| Deerskin - soft and velvety, with hunting holes... |
Elkskin is much stiffer on the surface finish, and yet amazingly stretchy as well. It`s matte surface made me wish, I could find more upholstery stock, that looks like this.
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| Elkskin - amazingly speckled |
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| Soft edges |
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| First three colours |
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| Zippers and some brights |
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| Knots and tassels... |
Posted by Jolanta http://jolavdesigns.com
Looking forward to more of your creations. Just reading about this makes it very tempting to open my wallet and pull out the credit card.... Ha ha.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, you are very talented. And I love that you 'play around' with not to common materials. It's awesome.
Thank you --it is the materials that often define what and how I will build. I guess, over some time I have developed some skills to adopt to different materials faster; also the new machine is a great help. Thank you again - we just had a shoot of the final results of this, and a bunch of other new things -- cant's wait till the pics are processed.
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