My Fashion Design Runway Show

This is the back of one of my final project garments.  'The Peacock'.  I entered the avaunt guard category and made my theme birds, just I could make this dress.  All of the dresses feature hand-dyed silk velvet that started white.  It took me a lot of the semester getting the fabric ready.  This piece features a train of peacock feathers with a peacock feather collar.  It looks amazing when the model walks.  I had the feather masks made custom for my designs from the place I purchase all the feathers.

I returned home from my mission not certain of what I was going to do next.  I really didn't like school.  I loved the learning, but the social part of it was so hard for me.  I know that I am a freak, but I do not need to be reminded of it for 4 hours in a day.  That was too much for me, so the thought of more college turned me off.  I had not been successful in the work sector.  I guess I am a complicated person.  I do not do well in a group environment, unless the people like me or whether they know how to take advantage of my talents and that doesn't happen very often.  My future looked uncertain. 

This is the front of the peacock dress.  I made all the trains removable and on this dress the long sleeves can be unlaced.  The bottom of the sleeve features an embroidered peacock, you can see it in the top pic.

And then I went to the mall.  I never go to the mall.  Nothing fits me there, so it is not often a place I want to go.  But the Thousand Oak mall used to have a food kiosk that specialized in wraps.  They basically put a salad in a tortilla, but I was taken with the dressing and quality of ingredients.  So I decided to go to the mall for a Tacone wrap.

I just happened to bring a crazy quilt purse I had recently made.  It wasn't very sophisticated, since it was only meant to be an experiment into how I could bring quilting out into another form.  But I hate purses and carrying my stuff so I grabbed my attempt at art to take the sting out of it. 

This is the actually purse I had made.  I was able to find it and take a pic.

I am not into shopping.  I have spent too much time in dressing rooms crying in frustration and despair.  Why couldn't I have cute ruffles on my skirts or fun fabrics?  Why am I reduced to wearing the clothes of a deranged housebound grandmother because I was big?  It felt like a personal attack and my mother and I fought about my clothing constantly.  It was hard enough to be fat, but add frumpy and I had no chance.  I had some very hard feelings against the Fashion "Industry".  I love the art of making clothing, but the business end is beyond ruthless.  Clothing is so cheap now, it is more costly in supplies and time to make yourself something.  That is why I gravitate towards putting the effort into costumes. It is impossible for me to get a good quality costume off the rack.

A grouping of tables were set up near me as I ate my lunch.  I spotted that it was Brooks college of Fashion Design.  I sat at my table working myself up into a lather for all the injustices "they" have made me suffer.    There was a lull in the traffic at the tables and I took that opportunity to complain to the woman manning the booth.  It wasn't her fault.  I just needed the outlet.  To my surprise she didn't get mad, but instead turn the discussion back on me.
        "Well, Why don't you do something about it?"  That question took me back.  "We can teach you to do something about it?"  I happened to have the purse I had made on my person and was able to show her some of my work.  She asked if I would like to go to Fashion college and I baulked.  I hated school.  I didn't know if I could suffer the humiliation again.  I said no, but she asked if she could meet me in my home and see my other projects.  She appealed to my vanity.  No one seemed to really care about my work, so I was excited.

This poor garment does not look good on film.  It started out as white silk velvet and I layered in blues and green into the black to match the feathers.    This piece is 'The raven' and I did a process called devore to burn the word 'nevermore' into the fabric.

She was a scout.  I didn't know anything about that, but she came to my home and I wanted to present myself the best I could.  I had tons of quilts and I showed her some of the dresses I had designed for myself.  My mother had an amazing seamstress working for her making doll clothing.  For my birthday my mother would pay her to sew a dress for me.  I picked out the fabrics from downtown LA and we would go to the fabric store to pick out the patterns.  I never wanted the pattern as it was shown in the picture.  I would want a sleeve from another design and the style of skirt from another.  It was during this time my mother showed me how to look beyond the fabric they used and see the shape and if I liked the style of the seams.  It was a huge amount of work and quite a cost to get that dress to fit me.  I would go for fittings.  And I would learn a lot about the process of making it bigger and the trials my mother and the seamstress would get into.  I would have to beg for that dress every year, but it helped me so much.  I had something beautiful that I wanted for once.

I was concerned with the sewing part of the fashion design school.  I did not want to sew.  I had tried through out my childhood to sew, but my mother and I think very differently when we create and her style of sewing confused me.  I once sewed and picked out a sleeve seam 6 times because my brain could not see how to attach it properly.  My mother compares sewing like putting together a 3D puzzle.  I told her I hate puzzles and gave up in frustration.  I cried many times trying to sew in my childhood.  That was why I did not want to do quilting.  And then my mind opened up to quilting because it in only a 2D puzzle.  The pieces go together to form a flat object and my mind could understand that.
I made this cloak to fit me, a size 24 or a tiny model, a size 8.  The fabric is gorgeous in person. The feathers are removable from the bottom hem.

So I was scared to go to Fashion design school.  It was the fear that held me back, even as the school started to offer me scholarships and other perks like deciding my classes.  I had to have Friday off to go home and while my classmates had a class I was given special permission to take the class with another major. 

This is 'The Parrot'.  If you look at the skirt you will see parrot heads devored(burned) into the fabric.  I did slashed of red, blue & yellow to mimic the colors of the tail or train which can be removed.  The sleeve is scalloped with a beaded waterfall detail.

So why did I end up going?  Two reasons: First my mother said to me while we were driving back from my interview.  "I would kill to be able to go to this school."  That statement pierced through the fear and started me thinking.  The second was being invited to the Annual fashion show for all the graduating students.  For the finale project we are asked to create a collection of 6 designs and then they are walked down the runway.  A lot of my family went to my Runway show and supported me, including 3 Aunts from out of town and a couple of cousins and all my brothers.  I do not ask people to come to my events, but I am very grateful that we shared that evening together.  My sister-in-law talked to the judges and found out that they were having trouble deciding between me and the girl they did decide to win.  I was quite angry because they did not realize that I had dyed all of my fabric and then put the patterns into the velvet.  They thought I had purchase the fabric, unlike the other girl, who you could tell made the designs on the fabric because they were pictures of herself.  It hurt so much until my father gave me this advice.  "Sometimes others need to win."  I thought about that and it soothed my soul.  I liked my work.  I liked my choices and I could live without the plaque. But before all of this, before I went to the school I was invited to see the Runway show and that was the smartest thing the school did to get me.  As I watched the show I could see in my minds eye my work walking down that stage.  I saw the peacock dress in my head while watching that show and I held onto the design for 2 years until I saw it walk down the runway in the flesh.  I cried it was so beautiful and meaningful to me and me alone.

I had a very interesting time at school.  They kind of taught me to sew, but I was so advance compared to the other students it amazed me.  It was working with the models and learn how to drape a garment and then take it off the form and have the pattern in front of me.  I began to see the 3 D puzzle.  It was mind-boggling to both my mother and I when I started sewing costumes.  I can see the shape of a person and knew how to sew the seam on an outfit to fit them.  I do not understand how.  I can just see it in my minds eye.  I can see the puzzle now.  I won a lot of awards.  But they don't mean anything to me.  The thrill passes.  It is the recognition of my work that makes a difference to me.  It is others seeing & understanding the time and effort that was put into my creation and that is a very rare thing to find versus the popularity. 

'The Flamingo' is my finale piece.  As a collection these garments not only follow the same theme, but I used the same fabric in different colors and the same use of a train.  This train with tons of ruffles came out so cute.  the pink bubble on top is made of a sheer pink with the black feathers inside.  I love the free form sleeves flowing with ruffles, black lace and feathers.  Again I layered the black and pink dye colors on the skirt and burned in flamingos with a chemical process.  I made a mistake and actually burned the fabric causing holes.  I could not redo the fabric, so I hand beaded all the flamingos, so there is a bit of sparkle.

I graduated with honers with another Associates degree, so do two Associates equal a Bachelors?

I am so grateful that I asked Laura Huse(Peacock & Parrot) & Jessica Jones(Raven & Flamingo) (their names at the time) to do me a favor and model my dresses for a professional camera studio to go into my portfolio.  If I had not done that then I would not have a record of these pieces.  They are too small for anyone in my family to wear, so they just hang in the closet.

How I Fell into Quilting

This is a Watercolor one of the harder types of quilts I have done because the pattern is achieved through the tones of fabric and not the pattern or color.  We spent so much money on fabric because each type of  block must be made without using the same fabric twice!  But this is made by sewing strips rows of 2 inch strips together and then cutting.  A long process, but one that I love.  

I've been pretty good about writing here every week. I admit I have the time, but not always the willpower. There are just some days when I become completely overwhelmed. Drag down by the nothing that is my life. I am a normal human who has normal feelings. I try very hard to remain positive, but there are moments when that just doesn't seem possible and I feel like I am drowning in the negative. The feelings of loneliness, frustration and fear slams into me like a tsunami ocean wave that knocks me off balance and I start rehashing my old injustices. This has been one of those weeks, plus my poor 18 month old kitty died. We knew there was not much hope when we found out he had pneumonia, so I'm going to tell you the story about how I stumbled into Quilting.

Quilting did not appeal to me.  I am not very good at hand work.  Your  stitching looks like your handwriting and I have ugly handwriting.  My mother would give me small projects to do and I would become very discouraged when I would see the picture and compare my own work to it.  I have a perfectionist streak running through me.  If I put the time and the effort into something then I want it to look good.  My stitching is not pretty.  Plus I did the things my mother was into and she did not like cutting out all of the fabric pieces by hand with scissors.  So Quilting was off the table in our list of projects.

This is an example of one of my early quilts.  I found the animals on sale in a panel at a quilt store.  I cut it up to form the center squares.  I kept this one because the border was so difficult.  I figured out the exact math to get the colors to remain in order

Then one of my only friends Holly Jones, took a quilting class offered as a one-day project in one of our Church Super Saturday Homemaking days.  She was able to make a Christmas tree skirt from strips of fabric.  Holly showed me the project and raved about how easy it was and how fun.  I was skeptical, I was only 19 at the time, but it was Holly telling me these things and I trusted Holly.  The women in my ward(congregation) were so excited about the class that they asked the teacher to do another. 

So Holly convinced me to take the class.  She said we could take the class together and it would be so fun.  I loved to do anything with Holly even work if I had to.  I was in college now so I had some free days.  I then talked my mother into taking the class with me.  We went to the teacher to work out a deal.  My mother had connections to some very nice fabric and we were able to traded a bolt of very high quality muslin so both of us could take the class without paying actual money. 

Two of my students from my quilting class here in Virginia.  If you have never sewn I teach you how to do the "Trip around the world" pattern on the left.  If you have sewn before then you can pick your project and I will help you accomplish your goal.  The pattern on the right is the popular "Jar Quilt"  It is made from only fruit and vegetable fabrics.














We did not have a portable machine and had to borrow one of the teachers.  I am so grateful to her for being willing to let us use her machine because if she had been stingy about it I would not have found something so near and dear to my heart.  Now that I am teaching it is very important to me that I make the tools available for someone to try and see if they like the process.  I will provided all the fabrics for a lap size quilt and the use of my machine with the condition that the finished quilt be giving away to someone in need.  We have already had one machine break!  It's okay, it was about the right age for something to go wrong and we have multiple sewing machines.  I was kind of happy because we replaced it with a better one.

In the quilting class I was introduced to the new tool of quilting, the rotary cutter.  What a beautiful piece of engineering.  With a cutting board and ruler I could cut all my pieces fast and straight.  Then the teacher taught us about using strips and how to sew them together and then cut.  It blew my mind.  I started to look at quilting designs and instead of seeing the little pieces each cut out by hand, I saw the way to form the pattern using bigger pieces.  It was like the Matrix or when people talk about taking drugs, when I first felt my mind open up to the process of figuring out the easiest way to accomplish a difficult pattern.  It still plays like a movie in my head.                      
It is beautiful. 

This is a Thomas the Train engine block that I figured out how to do myself.  My nephew is a huge Thomas the train fan and I owed him a quilt.  It took me forever, but I figured out all the math to produce this block.
My favorite thing to do is figure out the exact amount of yardage needed of each fabric to finish the quilt with nothing left.  I hate having left over pieces.  It drives me nuts.  So for many piecing the quilt top is sewing a bunch of squares or triangles together, but for me it is much more.  It is the process.  It is the magic of starting with solid pieces of fabric and forming them into shapes with a few cuts and a few seams.  I love it!                                   And this is the quilt I made from the blocks. 
                                                                                       I used the border fabric to inspire the design.

Now the funny part is that Holly never took the class she had been so persuasive that I should take.  I do not believe she has ever made a quilted thing again while I have gone on to make hundreds, maybe I am in the thousands now that it has been close to 20 years of sewing.   I have sold my work to anyone that will buy, but with the cost of fabric and other materials it is impossible to get the amount of money out of a finished quilt with the amount of time put into it.  I have learned to do smaller projects and to sell the quilt tops to get more bang for my effort.

I wish to publicly thank Holly Jones for encouraging me to try something new and Gail Lafoy, the teacher who gave me so much.  And of course my mother who is willing to follow me in all my crazy schemes.  We now sell quilting square sets on ebay to allow us to buy what fabric we like.  It keeps us busy and we are able to get a little money to fuel our fabric addiction.

The picture on the upper left is a quilt made from the set of Disney themed fabrics we sell on ebay.  The border is done in a crazy quilt design.  And the pictures on the bottom left is made from Vintage Barbie fabrics and the Quilt on the bottom is from our Beatle fabrics.  I made using the sets we sell to show the different pattern you can make with the square sets.

The Lord of the Rings Elf Costume

Me, Rebecca Peck with a professional costumer from The Lord of the Rings Movie.

I've decided to do just a little antidote for this posting and instead it turned into a book,so feel free to skip what bores you..  The inspiration came from the picture above.  Doesn't look like too much, just me with some guy, but when I saw it again a rush of memories came back.  This picture should not exist because it is digital. 

The move over to digital photography for my family had been determinately.  I did not realize what a fragile object a digital picture is.  In reality it does not exist, unlike film, that is a physical thing, a digital photo is only a bit of ethereal data, once erased, it is gone.  I am not used to that.  My mother was a photographer, can't you tell with some of the photo's I 've put up?  I did not realize that with the move over to digital I became responsible for our pictures by default.  I did not do a very good job.  Don't get me wrong, I love digital.  I just should have had the pictures printed out by professional.  Oh, so many memories have been lost.  I now make sure to put everything on a thumb drive, but it took losing a couple of computers and a couple of years to learn that lesson.

The picture above should have been lost.  It was from when my mother and I went to The Lord of the Rings convention in Pasadena, Ca.  around 2005.  Sounds like a super nerdy thing to do, but it was actually for business.  Here is some background for you.

What do you think I did when I was by myself all the time?  It was reading.  And what do you think was around our house? Fantasy.  My mother is a huge reader.  She would get a book and sit in her chair until she finished it, no talking to anybody or making food, when she had a book in her hand I knew I was on my own.  I picked up what was in the house and I gravitate towards Fantasy also.  Everyday life stories are so boring to me and rather pointless.  I don't want to read about a day in the life, just not interested.  I want to be taken out of my deary world and be with characters that chose the right and good.  I do not like the grays of reality.  I had to deal with that enough on my own.

So My mother exposed us to The Lord of the Rings pretty early in life.  And by that I mean the cartoon movies, at one point my brother could quote The Hobbit cartoon.  So when I saw that I could read The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien for extra credit in English, I went for it.

I hated it.  I did not like Bilbo.  I thought he was an idiot.  I was so angry that I was so very disappointed by the book after all the hype I had heard.  I have no desire to see the movie.  More power to Peter Jackson for doing it.  So with this disappointment in me I refused to read The Lord of the Rings.  My Mother tries to read it every year and I thought she was crazy. 

Pictures of a quilt I made from the original artwork in the Oz books.  They are very art deco and one of my Mothers favorites.  She has collected the books for years.

Over the years while we traveled on road trips my mother and I would have hours to talk and inevidently one of our main subjects would be books, starting with what we had recently read.  But eventually we would always return to Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum and The Lord of the Rings.  I knew alot about Lord of the Rings despite not having yet read it.  What we marveled at was the fact that these two men were the first to create whole new worlds.  I believe you could say Jules Verne was the grandfather to fantasy, but he started with humans in a human world.  Baum actually wrote 15 Oz books before his death and then another author took over.  There is so much more than the world of the movie with Judy Garland.  The stories are so very clever, but defiantly for children.  I would laugh when Dorothy would get out of a dangerous situation by stamping her feet and telling the people they were "Bad Men!! and "Better shape up!!"  But in spite of that, Baum created a world with its own set of rules.  He created a place where animals could talk and magic could be done.  My mother read those books to me as a child and they made an impression.


The same can be said for JRR Tolkien.  He did not just create characters, but he came up with cultures and languages.  He came up with his own world of Middle Earth.  His decisions were not random.  I decided that I needed to read his work before I could judge fully.  It was hard sloughing through the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring.  He obviously did not know how to get started because I remembered yelling at my mother about Tom Bombadil and how unimportant he was.  Then, then the story started to move.  It took Tolkien time, but he finally figured out how to give you background information, but still kept the story going.  I was so shocked with the ending of the second book The Two Towers that I immediately jumped up to get book three and preceded to read The Return of the King in only 2 days.  I finally understood the passion and the fever.  I was hooked and I wanted more. 

Then talk of the movie.  I wasn't excited.  I hate movies done from my favorite books. I know it is me being weird and I just have to shrug my shoulders in response.  First of all, why can't they just follow the book?  I understand having to cut stuff out, that is going to happen no matter what, but the dialogue is right there.  Why add stuff that was never in the book?  It wouldn't bother me so much if it was true to the character, but most of the time it isn't and I get so frustrated I want to pull my hair out.  I remember alot.  I mean if I liked a book I can remember stuff I read when I was 8 years old.  I notice when scenes aren't right.  Then my second reason for not liking to watch movies off of books is that I always see it in a different way on my head.  I love books because I can picture what people look like,  I decide what clothes they are wearing and how they act and there body movements.  With a movie I am being forced to look at how someone else saw the book.  And to me it will always be wrong.

Peter Jackson understood the Hobbits.  He did a great job with that storyline and I admire him for that.  The other movies made Samwise into a sniveling horrible pain in the butt, but in Peter Jackson's portrayal he was just as I imagined in the book.  I give the man credit and i am glad that he won an Oscar, but Jackson did not understand the Elves or the relationship between the Elves and Man.  I was sicken at how mean Elrond was played or the very strange scene with Galadriel turning into the green monster.  This is just my opinion, so please don't take any offense,  It is only to illustrate that I try to admire great work and I also try to point out the flaws.  People should be given credit where credit is due, not because it is popular.

So with my Mother's love of the movies and characters and my own respect we started a little side business.  My mother has made artist design felt dolls for most of my memory.  She has had agents and done alot of business through dolls show.  Those things are hard work, but it is a place for buyers to come and see your new lines for the year and order your product.  The biggest one is the New York Toy show.  I only got to go one year because it is a huge expense.  My mother would have to sell 20 dolls to pay for that one trip, but it was worth it because she would end up selling double that. 

Display of a full size Ringwraith in the Sideshow booth in New York.

So the one year I went to help her I went walking the floor on a break.  The place was huge with major manufactures of all kinds of toys & dolls.  I had worked on local dolls shows and I knew I could get free stuff, but even better where finding resources of people and items, plus if you made friends, some of them would sell you their samples for cheap.


I ran into a company called Sideshow Toy, they had gotten the license to work with Weta, the company in Australia who did the Lord of the Rings movies.  My jaw dropped when I saw the statues of the movie characters.  I knew that we had to strike.  I ran to Mom and she set up an account with the Company, who it turned out where located only 30 minutes from our home.  I became a full time seller on ebay.  It was amazing and we made lots of money and hept what we wanted.  It became a frenzy for quite a while.  But as with everything the fad passed and we have quite a bit of product left. 

Pics of Different product we bought and sold.

We always were looking to sell our product.  So what could be better than at a Lord of the Rings convention?  So you see we weren't being nerdy at all, well OK, yes we were being nerdy just in a smart way.  We meet some great people.  They went all out for the convention and got some major stars to come.  It turned out that you could pay to have an autograph and a picture taken with one of the major stars including Elijah Wood (Frodo), Sean Astin, (Samwise) and John Rhys-Davies (Gimli).  I hope I printed the picture of my mother being pushed over by Sean Astin's bodyguard.  They were taking a shortcut next to our table.  I was yelling at my Mom to move, but she couldn't hear me over the roar of the fans.  She happened to be bending over at the time to get something and did not see the large mean looking black man coming at her.  Luckily it was only a bump on the butt, but I captured it all on camera, to bad it has probably been erased into oblivion.

Now to get to the point of this post.  I just thought I would tell you a bit about myself and my weird tendencies that frustrate others all the time.  So this convention had some major stars and some major money behind it.  We did fantastic with our statues by- the- way, the fans were nuts about them and we were able to make money even after paying for all the expenses, the table alone takes a good chunk out of the profit, but then add food.... many times we have ended a weekend of work only to have nothing left in our pockets. 

I always try to enter the costume contests of the functions I go to.  It isn't easy when you are a fat girl.  Guys can get away with it a little better, but their just aren't many big boned characters.  No matter how much I wanted to be Cinderella  or Sleeping Beauty or even the Little Mermaid with my red hair, I just knew it would be a ridiculous sight.  That's why I don't call myself a pessimist or an optimist.  I am a realist. 

Unfortunately with the Lord of the Rings World and especially the world of the movie, I was screwed.  The only choice for women is Arwen the Elf or Galadriel the Elf, maybe a hobbit woman, but that is it.  There was no way I would ever be a porky Arwen.  So instead of chosing a certain character to copy, I used the parameters set up by the movie and made myself my own version of an Elf costume.  I followed their pattern of sleeves and neckline and style, but I made it so it would look good on me choosing green, brown & gold.
                                                       The costumer choose to put the Arwen(Rivendell) Elves in Blues and grays.  While they put Galadriel (Lothlorian) Elves in White and Silver.  I wanted to chose color that would work for me.  Also the pictures show the use of certain fabrics.  I followed the costumers lead in my chocies.

I started with the base dress making it out of a beautiful silk shantung that looked forest green, but when moved changed to a golden brown.  When the fabric was sewn into a drees with a full train, the folds would change color with my movement.  For the sleeves I added a fabric with textured flowers to reflect the forest of the Elf.  Then there is a corset made from a Rust color Velveteen my mother has had in her collection for decades.  I knew I would look fabulous in the color and wanted a dress made out of it since she bought it.  I decided to use it for this project.  The corset has gold grommets in the back and is laced with gold trim and decorated with thick gold trim.  But my Favorite part is the lushes Silk Velvet devore (patterns cut into the velvet) over skirt of leaves dyed with a rich array of greens.  I love the feel and the beauty of silk velvet.  It is expensive and it looks expensive, but is also very hard to work with.  It slips out from under the foot of the sewing machine and does not hold a shape very well, so you have to be careful how you use it.  I just finished the edges and placed hooks into the fabric and attached to the corset, making an ethereal cloud effect of fabric.  I then purchased a gold crown in the style of the movie props and put on a set of elf ears pulling my hair back so you could see them poking through.  I liked my effort and I was very happy with the end product.  Most of all I had made everything fit me.  In school I had learned how to grade patterns and I was able to change the patterns so that I could fit my strange body.  It was a tremendous amount of work and not one that I like to do for anything, but costumes.

I got ready for the costume contest and stood in line for the judging.  It was then that I heard the judges wanted to know what your thinking was behind making your costume and how it fit into the JRR Tolkien universe.  I kind of panicked.  I didn't think I could tell the judges I picked my colors based on my hair and what I had in my stash at home.  Luckily I had an hour to wait and come up with a good story.  In the mean time I got a chance to look over the other costumes in line and I felt my work was so poor next to so of them and leap years beyond others. 

There were two beautiful women dressed as Elves.  They had beading and fancy gold jewelry pieces.  They were skinny of course and had decided on a color palette of pastel purple and blue.  I looked like a hippo next to them and my confidence shrank.

I finally got to meet with the judges and I was surprised at how high up they were in the food chain.  Most of the time costume judges are not trained in costumes. It is more a popularity contest about who you like.  The man in the middle of the table was actually a costumer on the movie The Lord of the Rings!  I was shocked!!  I so wish I remember his name.  He was from Australia and worked for Weta.  Suddenly his opinion really mattered to me.  This was someone who knew his stuff.

I gave the story I had thought up in line.  I told them that I went off of the Elf Legolas to design the what the women of his culture would wear.  (He was the only person who wore green and had a forest motif.)  I told them I knew I had to be realistic in choosing a costume because of my body type, but I had made my choices with the forest Elf in mind.  It was a good interview and I answered their questions.  I left feeling I had done my best.

Picture of the Legolas Costume.  I followed his color palette, but wanted to look like a high ranking elf.

Meanwhile, during the wait for results my confidence and self-esteem fell into the toilet.  It is always whem I am around other people that I am reminded of how different and deficient I am.  I felt the resentment rise inside of me that I couldn't be a beautiful Elf.  By the time they started handing out the awards I was close to tears, not because I wasn't winning, but because it felt like once again my size defined me.  And then my name was call.  "What?!  I won!"  I went up to the stage in utter disbelief.  I had won for best original costume.  I sat down in a kind of stupor.

The picture that started this whole rant of a post came about when I caught the costumer by accident when no one was around.  He had forgotten something at the judges table and I happened to need something at my sellers table and they were near one another.  I asked him why I won.  His words still fill me with a certain kind of joy.

"I would have put your costume in the movie." 

To hear that positive feedback from a professional on one of the most popular movies of its day was earth shattering.  He noticed my choices, my fabrics, my design and style.  I followed the rules set forth by the movie designs, but I didn't just copy someone else's work, but tried to do my own interpretation.  I felt validated that my own creative choices were not made to wow the judges like the skinny elves, but that they were worthy of appearing along side the professionals.

I nearly killed myself trying to find the costume so I could take pictures of it, but alas it is still hiding from me.  I do not take pictures of myself (see post trying to be beautiful for that one), so I am not aware of any pics.  BUT I will post pictures of the costume if I find it.  Sorry, I really wanted to show it off too.