I had long been inspired by my piece of 1920's metal lace (shown above) to create a 'new' metal lace fabric.

Learning to script for laser-cutting enabled me to design a pattern with which to etch metal silk organza in a laser cutting bed in effort to create a new version of metal lace.

I wrote the script to create this repeating geometric pattern.

I created an AutoCad file from the script and then tested to see what could be done to the organza in the laser cutter. 

I was not able to cut clean through the organza as planned, so I merely etched the pattern onto the fabric.   There was considerable splitting where the etching intersected with the organza's straight of grain.
I ascertained that cutting the fabric pieces of this gown on the bias vs. on straight of grain would affect the structural integrity of my etched organza.

The beauty about this gown is how it will change over time. It will keep splitting over time, yet not completely fall apart as the habotai lining literally holds it together.  Also, the metal fibers in the organza will tarnish over time, thus changing the color of the gown.

It has been a wonderful ‘concept garment’ I am happy to share with you and introduce the possibilities for sewing via Visual Basic Scripting.
I have also experimented cutting this pattern completely through wool flannel, thus creating my own wool lace I will love to make a skirt from some day.  The lining of which may be changed out to display different colors through the cutouts!

You see I modified my version from the original vintage pattern by omitting the folded sleeves, allowing my gown to remain sleeveless.

My organza split too readily when the etched pattern ran along the straight of grain, yet on the bias, it was much more likely to remain intact. I love the fact that the bias makes the gown slower to split apart and yet, the 1930’s was such a big ‘bias decade’!  This is the 1930’s evening gown pattern from which I cut my etched organza gown.

While fulfilling a graphics course during my last year of Architecture studies, I learned to script a 2-1/2-D CAD program.  Of course, I appropriated that ability to advance the technical aspects of my sewing research.