CuriousCouture Web Hits From FFF Exposure

Looking over my web counters I noticed a huge spike in visitors to my sewing site. I only handed out around 300 postcards at the Flea, ordinarily only a small fraction of those get a web hit. Show exposure on the website and being in the program book really does bring people to your site. I have gotten three custom commissions since the show which is way more than normal for this season especially taking into account the economy.

Want this kind of exposure then start planning on entering the 2010 show! Even if you do not have a website or much of a business yet you can still be in the show. In fact that is why we created the show in the first place.

-Jim for fetishfashionshow.com

FYI

http://community.livejournal.com/corsetmakers/1458969.html

Still waiting on the pro pics but here is the flicker stream...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrebecca

I have been really busy this year with sewing projects. It seems that this was the year of wedding dresses*! I just finished up the third one and I have one more big gown due in Dec. I have also taken on some misc repair/alteration projects, all the way from a leather jacket to a technical search and rescue backpack. I am waiting on pictures from the last dress. It turned out really great and was gold and red silk. I really like making non-white dresses which is a shock to you I bet.

I have also taken on four custom outfits for the Fashion show as well as a custom sparkle vinyl strap on harness ;)

all that and my crazy DJ schedule; needless to say that I am now booked through the middle of Feb.



* well one was actually an outfit for a female "best man"; it was to match the other vests but take the form of a corset. We made it out of a Sari that was brought back from a trip to India. So far there are no real pictures of it since the Bride didn't like the way _she_ looked and embargoed all of the pictures of the wedding. Maybe if she went to CC she wouldn't have had a problem!

Since I have no time to actually organize by sewing area, I'm willing to trade for it to get done. Anyone local to Boston interested in getting a corset in exchange for getting my basement studio in working order?

I have lots of bins and stuff and can buy more. The fabric needs to get sorted, tools and notions all put in places that they can live in. Shelves put up. That kind of thing. It's not a small job and I really need a space that I can work in. My estimate is around 20 hours of work.

-Jim

Meghann over at the Somerville Journal interviewed me recently for a front page article. It just got published on Thursday and can be bought at the Store24 ($.75) as well as on the web for free. I have been living in Davis Sq for 4 years making custom corsets for friends in my spare time and it's really great to get the exposure.

Well, I finally got off my butt and finished the edits from the last photoshoot with the fabulous MollyHeartbreaker.



Pictures by Alisa Lemberg
You can see the entire shoot at CuriousCouture.com.

The corset and matching pencil skirt were made out of red pinstriped suiting material. Fake flap pockets adorn the corset. I topstitched red thread on the collar and cuffs that I ripped out of a purchased shirt. The hat was also purchased and dyed to get the red pin stripes.

The corset gives Molly a 6" reduction down to 19" fully closed. She is wearing it at 21" for the shoot.

...and yes that is a real .22 and machine gun bandoleer. There was this guy at the photo studio shooting on another set that came up to us and asked us if we needed guns, real guns :) He had a militia worth in his locker!

I just got up the pics from my shoot with dahling. The set can be found starting here.

I need to go back and redo the jpeg conversion on some of them due to excessive quantization noise. I also need to compress the old sets into one page each.

Through an interesting set of circumstances I now have two clients with almost the same measurements. To save some time I had client #2 try on the fitting corset from client #1 before I tore it up for the parts. Both wanted a long line Victorian underbust. An interesting thing is that both corset's busks twisted. This is the classic symptom of an asymetric body. One side of the corset moves up and the other moves down thus twisting the busk. On client #1, her waist is 1" lower on the right but her ribcage is the same size on both sides (her ribcage is actually longer on the right). For client #2 her right ribcage is actually 1/2" larger around, I didn't check to see if it went down further (my guess is yes) They both twisted the exact same amount but for different reasons.

It looks like I will add a quick check during the first set of measurements for asymetricness. It will save me a lot of time as this is the third client that has exhibited this tendency. I normally measure from the waist to the floor on both sides but this check failed me this time since the client also has another asymetry that cancels the waist one out when added together.

I was thinking of doing an open drop in sewing day on Sundays at my place. Is anyone interested? We can work on existing projects or try and do something collaborative. I currently have a lot of corset realated sewing to work on as well as a lot of pattern drafting to do. I need to get stuff done so I can't spend all of my time working on other's projects but I can consult if needed :)

I have quite a few machines as well as a full sized cutting table.