Sweater Knits

You probably heard that Chicago was buried in 20″ of snow and 50 mile an hour wind gusts this week (and right now wind chill is about  -10). So while I sat huddled in the house listening to the windows shake and crossing my fingers that my power wouldn’t go out, I spent some time poking around on Etsy. Was looking for sweaters and leather belts.

I bought a couple knitting machines in the fall from a friend, just before the crazy show schedule started and am just now finding a little breathing room, so it’s time to learn how to use these things. Here are 2 amazing inspiration pieces. Although at this stage all I can aspire to near term is probably a pot holder …

Hand Knit Cable Vest

Sweater Dress

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NY One of a Kind Show

Today was day one of the NY One of a Kind Show. Long day but I made it through with a lot of help from my summer intern Amanda, who happens to be an NYU student. I showed off a test run of the booth set up recently. Still some kinks to work out. The biggest problem is where to put a mirror. It gets congested when more than one person wants to use the fitting area. The depth of this booth is a bit shallow and I wasn’t able to put mirrors where I’d like them without racks extending too far into the aisle. Show management doesn’t like that. Nor do the neighboring artists. Not happy yet with the solution, nor do I want a mirror in the main walkway for people to trip over.  May make another store run in the morning, see what ideas I can come up with.

Anyway here’s a peak at the booth courtesy of Racked. Do you know them? It’s a great website that covers all the latest and greatest in shopping. NY primarily but I see they’re starting to cover Chicago too. One of the reporters stopped by covering the NY show.

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Cred Style

Scroll down the page a bit and on the right side of the page, you’ll see that Cred Style included a quick shot of my french terry vest. This was from the Modern Vintage show last month. Cool!

Really need to find more of this fabric. So often french terry is stocked in really basic, classic “athletic” colors.  Like red and navy and hunter green. Not my thing. I do have some that is intended to be dyed. Maybe after I make it through the crazy show run I have over the next month, I can play with garment dying again. This could be a good piece to play with.

Cred Style blog

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Good Design is Everywhere You Just Have to Dig

I don’t normally talk about personal stuff here but there is one exciting “kinda work, kinda personal” thing that I wanted to share. Over the summer I installed a shed on my roof deck for storing the extra cushions and garden tools and all the goofy odds and ends that can easily blow off the roof in the Windy City. Normally a pretty boring event right. You go to the local big box hardware store and get to choose between a gray metal “fake barn” or a green pressed board “fake barn”. Well I wasn’t satisfied with boring. This isn’t something I can hide out back behind the garage. I have to look at this thing, a lot.  So I contracted with a company out of Boulder, CO that does a really cool flat-pak, modular system called Studio Shed. These things are gorgeous, as in “I want to live in it” gorgeous. They thought the idea of a shed on a roof was a cool one, so they were kind enough to interview me and talk about my business (as well as the great shed of course) in their latest newsletter.

You can read it here. Take a look at what they do. It’s pretty fabulous!

And here’s a quick photo of my mine.

Dana's Cool Shed

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Show Prep Time

It’s crazy season here in the studio. I’ve booked myself with shows basically back to back from mid-Nov through mid-Dec. Normally that would be something that kept me busy but this year I’ve gotten even more complicated. I’ve added travel to New York and Vancouver into the mix. So that means allocating merchandise between events and figuring out how to get things where you want them and when. Do the gals in New York buy the same sizes and colors as in Chicago? What about Vancouver with it’s heavy Asian community? Lots of guesstimating going on.

Long distance driving isn’t my thing so it’s ship and fly. And getting a crash course in things like customs brokers, commercial invoices, palleting my stuff. I generally just throw everything in my car. So one of the things I’m doing is setting up a dummy test booth in the studio to see how it flows and to build the packing lists. Here’s a peak. Come mid-Dec I’m sure a serious spa day is going to be in order …

Booth Test

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Style Souk – Crain’s Chicago Business

Another little bit of love for the upcoming Style Souk event this weekend. Check it out!

Crain’s – Things to Do This Weekend

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Style Souk – Chicago Magazine

Chicago Magazine has listed Style Souk as “Top Sales This Week“. If you get my newsletters, you read about it recently. It’s a new contemporary and vintage pop-up shop I’ll be participating in this weekend. Really looking forward to this event. Being held in a beautiful gallery space in the West Loop, the former FLATFILEgalleries space. Music, wine, good shopping, all around lovely way to spend a little time on a fall weekend. Here’s the blurb. And below a photo of the gallery window.

Top Sales This Week

Style Souk Chicago (stylesoukchicago.com), a new contemporary and vintage pop-up shop, features designers Shernett Swaby (shernettswaby.com), Dana Killion (killionclothes.com), Ann Chikahisa(chikahisastudio.com), Ellie Thompson (ellieco.com), and more at the former FLATFILEgalleries space (217 N. Carpenter St.). Meet the designers and enjoy informal modeling at the opening event on Friday, October 1st, from 6 to 9 p.m. The market also runs Saturday, October 2nd, and Sunday, October 3rd, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Style Souk Window

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Finished Photo

As promised, I wanted to show off one of the pieces from the photo shoot I talked about yesterday. A little tough to tell but this is the same jacket that our lovely model Carrie is wearing in yesterday’s post. The photographer was Heather Talbert. Take a look at her site, she really does beautiful work. This is a jacket that you’ll be see on the site soon. It’s a crinkled wool gauze jacket, lined in silk, with a built in scarf.

Ava - Scarf Jacket

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Behind the Scenes at a Photo Shoot

It’s been forever since I’ve posted. Summer has slipped away while I was buried in work and an awful lot of personal garbage. Somehow I keep thinking it’s still July. Well, I thought it might be fun to show you a couple photos from my latest photo shoot. We did this a little over a month ago in my studio. These shots are just quickies from my iphone but it’s interesting to get a peek into how these things get set up. Photographer, photographer’s assistant, model, make up artist, me, and my intern Amanda who did the styling, lights, fancy paper, … As they say, it takes a village. Tomorrow I’ll show you the finished product.

behind the scenes

photo crew

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Two Generations of Killion Gals

One of my best customers, Jen, bought a shirt from me recently as a gift for her mom. Well the ladies were sweet enough to send me some mother/daughter photos today. Jen is wearing her Riley dress and Barb has the Greta shirt. Don’t they look fabulous!!!

Jen and Barb

Jen and Barb

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