fashion show fun

Yesterday I left our house just before 7am and got home at 11pm. It was a LONG day, and most of it was spent sitting in a van. It was fun, though, so I’m really glad I went. The ladies were great. I kind of figured they would be interesting and artistic and all, but I had no idea they would be as accomplished and multi-faceted as they were. One woman is a mural painter, color consultant, quilter, wearable art aficionado, calligrapher, and belly dancer! Another woman used to live in Portland, and it turns out her son and I were in the same graduating class in high school!
Anyway, our first stop was M&L Fabrics in Anaheim/Buena Park (I didn’t really know where we were). It looks like a rundown warehouse, but once you enter, there is fabric EVERYWHERE. Here are a couple of photos I snuck:

One section of the store.

They had rows and rows of these flatfolds. I think most of them were about $1.68 a yard or something ridiculous.
We only had about 30 minutes in the store. I picked up a few small pieces for making bags or pouches or other goodies:

After the fabric store we headed to Knott’s Berry Farm. Kind of a crazy place to have a fashion show, but whatever. The Bernina Fashion Show took place in a nicely designed auditorium. You can’t see much from this photo, but it might give you a feel for what the show was like:

It was an actual fashion show, complete with techno music playing in the background, over-the-top narration, and models doing those “vogue” kind of poses (I almost laughed out loud when the first model came out doing that in a wedding gown). I fell asleep during the middle (it was so cozy and dark in there). Some of the garments were truly incredible, and it made me tired just thinking about all the detail work involved. There was one coat that apparently took the equivalent of 3 months of full-time work hours just to embroider! Yikes! Anyway, I have a new appreciation for this world of wearable art. It’s not all quilted, asymmetrical jackets anymore!
One final thing–on the way back up the coast, we stopped in Santa Barbara to have dinner. We ate outside (OUTSIDE, people) at the Paradise Cafe, and it was divine.