Can I be her when I grow up?

Kayla Kennington is an Artiste Extraordinaire!

I have long admired her work and collected her patterns with dreams of some day incorporating a little of her genius into my own art.

As many of you already know, my first attempt at this was for VBG, where I used Kayla's unique seaming technique quite successfully. Here are a couple of close-ups of that:



After that I was hooked! I wanted to jump in to the deep end and make one of Kayla's amazing patterns! In July of this year I had the perfect excuse, my cousin was getting married in a small ceremony on the beach in Carmel, CA. and she wanted all of the guests to wear 'Ocean' blues.

I decided to make "Fantasia"


This is a beautiful jacket pattern I have had in my stash since it first came out. It is really quite simple when made as drafted, composed of mainly rectangles and triangles.

Of course, my brain just can't comprehend things like 'simple' or 'easy' nooo...that would be, well, too easy ;-) and apparently I must prefer my life a little more complicated.

The examples of finished garments made from this pattern on Kayla's site are truly astounding and inspiring! The one that really got my creative juices flowing was the floral silk georgette summer dress. Perfect! Except that the dress is not a draft that is included in the pattern. I did say that "Fantasia" is a jacket pattern, didn't I? But after seeing that summer dress, I had my heart set on making Fantasia into a dress for the wedding!

Since this pattern is comprised of mainly rectangles, it should be a fairly simple thing to just lengthen them all and make a dress. Right? Wrong! There are also triangles. Lots of triangles. And when you add triangles, you go from simple math to geometry. When I said my brain didn't like simple, this was NOT what I was talking about!

So what a girl to do? Call the designers website contact number for tech support, what else? I called on a Saturday afternoon, 'cause, well that was when I was getting frustrated. Not really expecting an answer, I got a recording of Ms. Kennington herself saying she was on the road until the following day. I hung-up without leaving a message.

Imagine my utter shock when the phone rang the following day, Sunday, and it was Ms. Kennington calling to say that she saw I had called, recognized my name on the caller ID (what? who? me???) and wanted to know how she could help me. OMG! It took me a second (OK a really long second) to compose myself enough to ask her about the dress draft.

We had a wonderful conversation and I must say that she is the kindest, patient and most generous woman you could ever hope to meet. She freely shared drafting help with me, even going so far as to tell me what size my rectangles should be based on my measurements and my height.

Kayla, if you happen to be reading this, Thank you Thank you Thank you! You are the best! I am just sorry it has taken me so long to get this posted, please see 'I am a baaad blogger' ;-)

Coming up: The journey of the Beach Fantasy Dress and Falling in Love with the Wrong Fabric ~