Tuesday 1 October 2013

The making of 'Forbidden Fruits - Red Yellow Blue'



Wearable Art is a labour of love
There is no two ways about it.

You have to have the bug,
the passion,the obsession 
and to be crazy enough to spend 
this much time on a work
that will never give a financial equivalence 
to the amount of time and money in materials
that goes into these creations.

However the friendships that are forged 
and the excitement that comes with seeing 
the works in their finished form 
and performing with other artists work 
from around the world is something 
that is beyond money.

Here is a bit about my work process for 'Forbidden Fruit -Red Yellow Blue'


I decided to enter the 
Gen I - Creative Excellence Section
The theme for this section this year 
was Art Forms in Nature - be inspired 
by the German Naturalist, Ernst Haeckel

Well I looked him up and I was inspired.

Below is the Earnst Haeckel picture 
that I based my piece on.


I started with my red piece.


The headdress is made from brown paper bags which I distressed.



 I combined these with some clear plastic 
loose leaf pages and chocolate wrappers
for sparkle



and some used tea bags.



These were all layered, 
hand stitched and machine embroidered until
they became a fabric like media.

I pieced them together and added 
a fringe of tooth picks and 
basketed one of my hand made cords 
around the edge just to make it a little 
less spiky for the model.


Inside is dyed and pleated silk 
and Turkish lace around the face


The cords in the collar and the dress 
are metres and meters long.





To make these I fed a combination 
of fishing line, silk yarn 
and shredded sari silk 
into the machine, twining them
together as I stitched.




   Many needles were broken
and many fingers stitched...OUCH!


 



       At the final photo shoot 
         Mara plaited Suse's hair with yarn 
      to match the corded collar.








  The dress fabric on 'Red' is a woven vintage rayon
 dyed with MX dye .  

   
                                                                             
   



      The lining inside the dresses of 
     'Red' (left) and 'Yellow' (right)    
        is MX dyed cotton 


I had to submit photos for the 
first judging round
but we couldn't organise a 
shoot before the deadline.

                                        3 busy models and a 
                                            sort after photographer 
                                              are hard to co-ordinate!


 So I took some rough photos 
on mannequins outside the studio. 

My rough photography 
must have been good enough.


With many, many, many 
hours spent on the 'Red'
I was running close to the wind
for getting the next two garments completed.

Why did I do three?
For a start sea creatures often travel as a school.



                                                   But for me there is also a delight in 
                                                   photographing my beautiful family  
                                                  (and some times friends) in my work.


                                         This year was about having a set of photos 
                                 with my daughter and two daughter in-laws together.

                                          The person modelling is always a consideration 
                                          I regard them as a major part of the design.




                                         For instance I designed 'Yellow' with holes 
                                     that make the most of Emma's tattoos at her navel
                                                              and also on her feet



        The dress is silk that I have shibori dyed 
        with silk dyes from Beautiful Silks
         to get the colour and the form in the cloth.



 The top of the hat is, like 'Red', 
made of paper shopping bags layered and stitched.


 


The underside is off cuts of fabric stitched onto
loose leaf plastic sleeves and 
melted back leaving holes
 to see the dyed silk inside the hat


'Blue' (a blue bottle)
was left with the least amount 
of time to complete by the deadline.

If I hadn't particularly wanted
these three girls in the shoot together 
I may well have left the entry as one costume.

But I was on a mission!


I WOULD get them done!





Once again the silk was bought from 
Beautiful Silks and dyed with their dyes
shredded, embroidered and shaped with fishing line.



The hat, like the underside of 'Yellow',
was fabric layered and stitched 
on plastic loose leaf sleeves 
then melted and appliqued with felt yarn









Mission accomplished!

Another wonderful WOW experience









2 comments: