This Is Framingham

Ethan and I were taking a walk one night and noticed a sign in a window for Celtic dress designs.  I was really curious and wanted to learn more about this business and why they picked downtown to open their shop so I emailed the owner and she was nice enough to invite me into the shop and show me around.
Julia Ebel, the director, designer and owner, started the business almost 2 years ago and has been at this street-viewable location on Union Ave. since this past summer.  She’s from Natick but chose this location for it’s affordability and space.  As she showed me around and talked about the work involved in these dresses, I was amazed at the attention to detail that goes into these dresses and the quality of fabric she chooses.
With the help of her mom and some Framingham State College interns, she makes beautiful Celtic dance competition dresses as well as any kind of non-Celtic  special orders and can reproduce dresses from drawings/photos and even wedding dresses.
Here are some of the dresses both finished and in-progress:

Some children’s dresses:

One of my favorites was a colonial dress, perfect for a costume party:

Another thing I like about Julia’s shop is that she loves working with her clients on the design.  She said sometimes people will come in with a family crest and ask her how to work it into a dress design, while others will leave it up to her to design and she sends them her designs to choose from.  For anyone interested, she always welcomes people to come to the shop, take a look around and see the workspace in back.  I highly recommend checking the shop out if you can, Julia is very informative and great to talk to.  I went there thinking I’d visit for 15 minutes and we ended up talking for almost three hours.

Celtic Dragon Dress Design is  located at 118 Union Ave, 2nd Floor, right across from the Danforth Museum. (phone: (508) 820 7745)    
For more information you can check our their website: http://celticdragondressdesigns.com