Hand-painted Silk Wedding Dress

On March 8, 2006, I was featured as the Reader of the Week in the Lake County News Herald. The article highlighted my talents and success as a local silk painting artist.

This article generated a very special project for me. A young woman in Perry, OH was frantically searching for a silk painting artist. She was getting married in August 2006 and wanted a special, custom-made wedding dress. She had designed her gown utilizing three different patterns and already purchased the off-white doupioni silk and lace her mother would use to sew her "dream dress". Thanks to the article and her future mother-in-law, I was contacted.

From our first meeting we each had a goal. Anna wanted her "dream dress" to be color-coordinated with her brides maids dresses utilizing a swirling waterfall pattern. I wanted the challenge of fulfilling Anna's goal. The colors included purples, blues, greens, fuchsia, red and silver. Since her mother was sewing the dress I was given five separate dress panels. This made it much easier to coordinate and mix the colors, iron, stretch, paint, dry, steam, wash, dry and re-iron each piece individually. I had much more control over the whole process and I believe this is why it was successful. In total it took me approximately 40 hours to complete the project, which also included pinning each piece to a mannequin so that Anna would get a better idea of how her completed dress would look. As you can see, she was thrilled with the results. I can't wait to paint another special piece - any requests?