thedailymartini

Welcome to 2017!

It’s a new year, and I am back at The Daily Martini! I’m ready to jump in and get back to sharing style musings over a smart cocktail.

But before I do that, I want to share some background on my absence and set some expectations for future musings. You may have noticed it’s been a little over a year since my last post. Since that last post a couple things happened. One, I was in the fight for my life…literally! I was diagnosed with colon cancer and the big “C” is a lot to cope with. Trying to juggle surgeries and chemo treatments, much less trying to maintain full-time employment and a blog – it was a lot of work!

Second, having the big “C” made me reevaluate my priorities. I was feeling like the content of my blog was taking me away from my true passion – fashion design.. I find true peace in sketching and creating clothes so I wanted to take a step back and really focus on that passion.
Between chemo treatments, we had three weddings in my family last year! They were a much needed distraction and a good opportunity to focus on designing. I set a goal to make a dress for each wedding. It was stressful but so rewarding. I really stretched my skills and surprised myself with what I could accomplish. Over the next few posts, I’ll share with you the story of each dress, including the initial inspiration, design challenges and lessons.

You may remember me telling you about my first trip to Mood Fabrics in New York City back in 2011. Since that trip, I’ve been collecting fabric I find inspiring and beautiful. So it’s no surprise that a trip in Paris in 2015 resulted in a broken luggage zipper caused by an overabundance of fabric procured from several shops in Montmatre!  

I tell you all this because my 2017 goal (and large focus of the blog this year) is to whittle down the stash in a way that’ll be exciting for all you lovely readers to follow along with! I pondered a fun way to do this and came up with a fun solution: A Project Runway-style Swatch Challenge! This should come as no surprise since I am obsessed with the show! So here’s how it’ll work: I’ll put swatches of all my fabric in a bag and blindly pull out one swatch.  Then, the challenge is on to design something with that fabric! I’ll give myself 30 minutes to sketch, 30 minutes to gather any additional supplies or fabric, and 1 week to put the design together (I’m estimating 2 – 3 hours a night for a week, which is roughly the same amount of time PR designers get to put their designs together).

Fun, right?! My first Swatch Challenge will begin in a few weeks so stay tuned – I can’t wait to dive in!

Up next, I’ll share the story about wedding dress #1. There’s a bit of surprise twist, so don’t miss it!

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