Time out in Africa

These are some photos from this summer where a couple of friends and I volunteered in an orphanage in Ghana, Africa. Although it was only a short period of time, we managed to get quite a lot of work done such as organizing a library, buying textbooks, building a table tennis table, bringing them for HIV testing, getting health insurance and ringworm medicine for the children. The HIV testing and health insurance was a continuation of the good work that Trevor and Marie -- volunteers who had to leave soon after we arrived -- had started. I'll put more of the photos on Facebook or Snapfish to share. Also, check out the video that Gangwei made -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co-nGwg568c

(To be continued)

NYU SSA Website

Total side-track from sewing here, but I wanted to keep a record of this anyway. This was a website I designed for the Singapore Students Association at NYU when I was the webmaster. It's been handed over to Edwin so it'll be in good hands yay! On the splash on the left, the five links turn into colored versions when your mouse rolls over them. Pretty photos courtesy of Weiyao. You can view the site here if you are interested.

First Latin Dress Ever

This was made entirely on a whim and I used the Yale Dance Competition on Dec 2nd 06 as my deadline. The material is actually purple lycra although cameras have a weird way of turning it blue.

I didn't take many photos on that day so I don't have a proper full length photo of the front yet. Parts of the top and skirt had lighter purple Swarovskis glued onto them although you won't be able to see it in detail here. The skirt was a circle skirt with gathers on the hips and the bra top on the inside was black with black flat sequins.

I was incredibly paranoid about my costume falling apart on the dance floor at first but then had to convince myself that everything was secure, and it was. Jayson wanted to wear a purple bandanna with my excess material and thus, the purple ninjas were born. Boy will I miss him when I graduate and leave.

Green Latin Dress

This was my second latin dress I tried to make. The dress was inspired by a large pink jewel flower hair pin trimmed with gold which I bought at H&M. Will load photos of that once I'm back in my New York apartment.

The sequins on top and behind were painstakingly hand-stitched but I ended up just gluing the individual sequins below instead.

Gah, I'll edit the layout later.

Navy Gown for St John's Mayball

This gown was made for a May Ball I was going to in Cambridge, UK. I wanted to challenge myself to make a gown instead of buying one as usual. This turned out pretty well considering I didn't have a dress form and I had to create a pattern from scratch without having any proper measurements.

Unfortunately, it rained like mad during the Ball and so a long dress with heels that sunk into the muddied grass probably wasn't the best idea. The food was typical Brit together with free-flow alcohol - not very impressive in my opinion. However, the fireworks display with music was the best I'd ever seen and that made trotting around in the rain and mud worthwhile in the end.

Purple Dress for Central Park!

Some of these photos were on my facebook note but I decided to post them here to keep better track of my progress.

This was a purple jersey knit dress I made in 45 minutes to go to Central Park with the Singaporeans at NYU. Although the location was changed due to rain later on, I was happy with my attempt to finish using up some fabric. Voila!

Oh yes, the halter has pleats on one side in case the photo's not clear.

Monaco Blue Dress

Sorry for the terrible picture but until i get a mannequin/model/photographer this will have to make do. This was a blue dress I made to wear to a party some time ago in which the theme was Monaco Blue if I remember correctly.

This was a light blue stretch jersey that I bought from Spotlight. Knee was injured as usual.