National Dress Day

 It's National Dress Day today, so my mind goes to all the incredible forms and styles of dresses that designers have brought forth through history. With my decades in the flooring industry most assume I have a degree in Interior Design but my formal college education came in the way of Textile and Apparel Management, so not only am I fond of fashion I actually have a degree in it. The same fundamentals of design reside in both personal fashion and interior design that moment when form and function come together to create something material and magical.

Artists from the beginning of time have used the recipe of form and function to create their masterpieces, but the designer, dress maker and person that had the biggest influence on my life was my Grandmother.  Rebecca never formally trained or traveled the world, in fact she rarely left her farm in rural Calloway County but she could sit down at her kitchen table leaf through a catalog and transform a stack of newspapers into patterns that would come to life as the dresses, drapes and fashions on the pages. This art of transforming items from imagination to realization stretched far beyond her textile abilities. She used these same skills when it came to cooking, bee keeping, gardening, livestock and more. 

I reflect fondly on Sundays and Summers spent on her farm where I was always a student eager to learn and she was equally ready to explain each step of what ever task was at hand.  Those valuable skills of  reason and problem solving still serve me today and while I don't stop to think about her everyday I do have many reminders of her I keep close at hand and memories like her magic patterns and the influence of the very first dress designer I ever knew.