This past Friday was no more than a real life Project Runway scenario, all to impress my favorite winner of PR, Christian Siriano. He decided it would be fun to make an appearance at the local mall (for I have no idea what reason) and I wanted to impress him so that he would maybe hire me as an intern in the summer. I had about 20 hours to make a dress completely from raw mens suiting fabric that would be good enough to impress Christian.
At 8 o'clock, three hours after I started, I had the dress in pieces, without any lining, and as long as a nuns dress. As I started the lining, Catalina sat there and studded (or as we call it, "bedazzled") the dress like she was getting paid. She wasn't. At midnight, Catalina was finishing the studs and I had just finished the lining. For some reason after that, my hands and the sewing machine were no longer friends. I sewed the side seam of the lining to the dress and, oops, screwed it up. Ripped it out. Tried again. Oops. Screwed up. Ripped it out. Tried again. Win.
Saturday morning, I tried it on my model Lindsay, and of course, the sides had been taken in too much. So it was 11 o'clock, Christian went on in two hours and I had a dress that was too small, had no zipper, and no hem. My life was coming to an end. I took out those seams, redid them and sewed like I was on crack. I finished the dress at 12:57. Yes, three minutes before Christian walked on stage.
We drove to the mall and luckily Christian was still sitting there talking away, and we decided to switch Eirinn, my friend that came along, into the dress. Surprisingly, it fit her much better than Lindsay. We talked to Christian, he loved it, I asked if he needed a summer intern and he asked for my email. Hopefully that means he'll email me.
Christian is coming back to DC on Saturday (10/10) for a book signing and I'm making another dress to show to him. Better start working.
