Rhoda Perdition

First I stitched this back patch on. I bought it a year ago but waffled on how to affix it to the jacket- it was an iron on, but I doubted the adhesive would do well with leather. But then also, hand stitching through two tough materials would be a bitch! In the end I just decided, who needs fingers anyhow? I went through a lot of bandaids but it’s on there!

Then I started spiking it. This part is so satisfying and fun and I’m just going to keep doing it in little spurts until the whole thing is covered. Like a hedgehog.

My first thought was to use plastic scales to avoid scratching the pole with metal. The next idea I had was to create a base garment and make scale panels that would detach- that way the garment can be washed, and won’t have jump rings as the stress points. It has to move with the dancer and be comfortable and durable.

These are the scales we chose!

We decided on a shape and I made a prototype of the base garment, shown here. I wore it to a freestyle pole party and while the bottoms worked great, the top did NOT hold the nips in. While that’s not a dealbreaker in performance, it’s distracting and annoying if you’re not planning on it. I’m reworking the construction of the top so that it’s more secure, but the bottoms were ready for prime time!

We wanted the fabric and the scales to match somewhat, so I found this dead stock 4 way stretch and lined it with black swimsuit fabric I had in the stash. Additionally, the dancer wanted a thong back, so we added a third O-ring. I connected them with adjustable straps I made from the spandex and lingerie sliders. Sliders are a game changer for me!!! It really helps make sure things fit securely.

An ex-libris, also called bookplate, is a kind of printed stamp at the beginning or end of a book that says who owns it (think of the stamp you surely have seen in the books owned by a library). Though ex-libris have been used since ancient times, their "golden age" in Catalonia was during the Modernist movement (the Catalan equivalent of Art Nouveau), where many bookworm people commissioned artists to have a beautiful personal ex-libris that they could use to stamp all their collection.

The text in the 1st one, written in the Catalan language, says "no matter how much you know, there's always much more that you don't know" (per molt que sapies es molt mes lo que ignores).