Just a little catch-up

I'm still plugging away with more projects at home, but seeing as I've left my camera at the studio, this post will just be a catch-up on the three pieces Astrid and I did for the "Production" project in Projects II.

It was a really good exercise in working together. One idea sprung another and another--the creativity it fostered was great. But I feel like conceptually, it was hard to keep it focused and together. Next time, I really think more time should be spent sketching and solidifying a unified concept and work-plan.



Dress no.1: Earth--muslin, gauze, cardboard, varnish.
Astrid made the beautiful cardboard top for this--I adore the way it looks, unfortunately, it ended up being more fragile than anticipated. My portion for this one fell through a bit. The knitted skirt I posted about last time was meant to go with it, and I spent a ton of time working on it, but in the end, it really didn't work together. The skirt you see on it now was a hail-mary 2-AM-the-night-before bit of work (not procrastinating on that, just I'd been trying to get the crystal done, it was due the day before)



Dress no.2: Sea--wool, garland, thread, fabric medium, silk, cotton knit
The most sucessful of the three, I think. The integration on the (very!) different parts and textures went way better then I would have imagined. I love the texture Astrid created with the felted wool on the skirt, and I'm really happy with the wool-and-fabric medium over the shiny square christmas garland I used for the top. It obscured it just enough--made it look like rough ice.



Dress no.3: Sky--silk crepe, coiled cotton gauze, cotton fabric, bleach.
Stretching the limits of dying (or at least, past my limits of dying.) Astrid dyed that beautiful gradation of grays, and I'm proud to say the black silk crepe was my dye-job--I've failed so many, many times to get accurate blacks that "failure black" is a color I've become very familiar with. And I know we both swore to never coil again, but there it is up on the bodice. Looks very pretty, don't know how well it'd hold.

All three dresses came out very beautiful, but I think the shifting focus and the fact that they aren't a sturdy as I like my finished garments to be means I'm sort of ambivalent about them. However, I do love a lot of the techniques that came out of the process, and I really hope that we can collaborate more~


This post has also shown me that I take awful, awful pictures of my work. I'm really sorry about that, I can't blame it all on my point-and-shoot piece of crap. So my belated christmas resolution is to take more care with photos of my work.