The Weirdo Dress- inspiration from an artist

When my sister told us all about her solo art show some time last year I knew that I wanted to make a special garment for her, The velvet jacket and of course one for me! You can read all about her jacket in this post and construction details in this post.

For my outfit, I knew that I wanted to wear the jacket that I made using one of her designs that I had custom printed on fabric at Spoonflower. You can read all about the jacket and the original outfit HERE. From 2016.

For this special event I really wanted to create a dress that was fully inspired by my sister’s creative mind and her artwork. I spent some time going through my fabric collection to pick a fabric that would work with the jacket. At the same time, I worked on sketching out ideas in Procreate on my iPad using My Body Model Croquis. Here you can see the original design that I sketched out and used for a guide in creating my dress.

I used my princess sheath dress pattern as a starter and made new front panel and back panels to try out the idea. With the muslin on I then placed the straps to create the upper design element. With this done I drew and then cut out the motifs at the bottom. To create the shapes, I used the shapes from the print on the jacket run under the main green shape.

With the muslin done and me being happy with the design I finalized the pattern pieces and got to work on the garment. The fashion fabric is a beautiful wool/linen tweed from with blue and green yarns that I purchased from Michael Fabrics/ A Fabric Place in Baltimore. I underlined these pieces with off white silk organza and lined with a blue silk.

If you look closely at the back neckline you can see that the left and right sides are slightly different. This is because of the princess seams at the front being asymmetrical up to the shoulder. I did my best to create a similar shape on each side and moved forward. I could have purposefully done something asymmetrical on the back neckline as well but I thought that from a design perspective it was too much.

To create the cutouts around the bottom hem I first made sure that the hem was deep enough so that the inside was wide enough to cover the entire cutout area and used a lightweight fusible interfacing throughout the entire hem area. It was helpful to have the muslin so that I could carefully plan where the shapes would be placed so that they looked even and did not interfere with the kick pleat.

From the front, on the hemline I stitched an organza patch, cut out the center, pulled it through to create a window and then secured the organza on the inside using super fine Japanese fusi-web and tiny catch stitches. Then when the hem was folded up I basted around each shape and then very carefully cut out the shapes leaving about ¼ inch and carefully snipped and folded these under and slip stitched the back to the front along the window edge. If interested more in the window technique Gail Patrice Yellen has a book called It’s all about Embellishment! that has more information on this.

The only ‘issue’ that I had with this garment was that my bra wanted to keep peeking out of the cutout in the corner. To fix this I just put the bra on with the least amount of show- and also happened to be one of my older bras- I marked it with a frixion pen to where it was showing and then since it was a foam cup I could easily just cut away the area and no more peeking! I also made bra strap keepers to keep everything in place.

The day of the event we got to the museum early before the opening and my daughter played photographer. It was so MUCH fun to have my garment photographed with the artwork that inspired it!!! You will have to forgive the wrinkles – I did have to sit in the car to get to the museum and this fabric has just enough linen to wrinkle. It shows its character!!

PS - in case anyone was wondering why I have called this my Weirdo dress- as my sister was creating many of her art pieces she would refer to them as her weirdos or her weirdo army or weirdo friends. So, I felt right at home in that ‘space’. Hence the name – Weirdo Dress!

Happy Sewing and please Stay Safe and Stay Home!

Debut of the Velvet Jacket and The Misfit Children Gallery Opening!

So very much has happened so quickly in the world over the past couple of weeks that I am now just catching my breath and adjusting to all the changes. Of course, just when I think I have it figured out and I am OK with it, something else crazy happens. We all have our own stories to tell and our own feelings to feel so no need for me to expand. You all know exactly what I am talking about! And by all, I mean every single person on the planet! (which is, by the way, hard to wrap my mind around!!)

I wanted to share with everyone the debut of the navy silk velvet jacket that I made for my sister! I am giving myself a big pat on the back and an even bigger sigh of relief- it FIT and my sister looked amazing and comfortable and confident in it.  You can read the post on construction HERE.

My sister, Jen Torres, and myself at the Gallery talk of her show.
Same picture below excepted lightened up so you can see the details of her beautiful outfit better.

Just as a reminder I only ever did a fitting for in muslin and not in the actual fashion fabric. SO once it was completed and wrapped so very carefully in tissue and mailed off to her I did not get to see her in it until the day of the Gallery talk for her show Misfit Children - landscapes & creatures from the mind of Jen Torres.

The opening Gallery Talk was only done with a much smaller group of people than originally planned. This was the very start of the Covid19 pandemic hitting the United States. So the talk was just the family, minus my brother from the Netherlands due to flight restrictions from Europe, and a couple great friends. The Museum - The Tennessee Valley Museum of Arts did a great job of an on the fly live streaming of the gallery talk on Facebook!  I may be a little biased but I think it was an excellent artist gallery talk. I suspect that it is partly because my sister is AWESOME and partly because she is a college professor. You can find the talk HERE! (Don't worry only the first few minutes are sideways!)

I have always loved my sisters art. This collection is one of my favorites!  I love the colors and the details, the changes in scale and all the varied aspects of the pieces. It is sooooo hard to pic my favorites. If you check the links above there are many more pics on the museums website and in the Gallery talk on Facebook.

Here are some more candid photos of Jen in in her beautiful Jacket during her gallery talk. She is vey passionate about her work and as you can see from the photo's she likes to talk with her hands.

 Congratulations to my sister on her show and her grace in dealing with the every quickly changing environment in dealing with Covid19. Grace under pressure!

Family and friends gathered together to celebrate Jen!
(minus the princess... she was off running around somewhere!)

My immediate family is spread out all across the United States and the world. Illinois, Mississippi, Delaware, New Jersey and the Netherlands. We don't always get the time to all be together and it was so nice for most of us to get to spend a lovely weekend together. Celebrating my sister, eating, drinking, singing and just having some good old family fun together! It was nice to give big hugs and hold each other as we said our goodbyes and headed back to our respective homes and into the uncertainty that we are facing with this COvid19 pandemic.

Stay Home, Stay Safe, Stay Well!! And a big THANK YOU to all of the essential workers out there keeping our society safe and working!!

Happy Sewing!

One last parting shot of the Princess enjoying her Great Aunt Jen's artwork!



Ponderings of an Art Quilt

I have been itching to make an Art Quilt and in fact that is something on my list of things to explore in 2010. I have made some in the past, just a couple, and have really enjoyed the process. I have also created several crib and lap top size quilts over the past 20 or so years. I like creating them.

I have tried a bit of traditional bed quilting and have found the process to be too 'big'. I don't have enough space to feel that I can really do it justice and I really don't feel a big calling towards it.

I come from a family of artists (traditional artists, graphic artists, stained glass artists, woodworkers, sculptresses, painters, drawers) and have always thought of myself as not being an artist. I cannot draw, I cannot paint and power tools are not my friend. However over the years I have found myself to be very creative and somewhat of an artist in my sewing room. I thought about what makes an Art Quilt and for that mater what makes something Art. I found this great example on the web:

What is a Contemporary Art
Quilt

From Lisa Call’s
http://www.squidoo.com/artquilts/

There is a lot of discussion in the
art quilt world about what exactly an "art quilt" is and what we should call
them. The simple term "quilt" is deemed unacceptable by a large portion of the
general art quilting population because of the connotations of traditional quilt
that it carries with it. So most people prefer to add some type of disclaimer to
qualify the type of quilt they make.One of the more common terms is "art quilt".
I prefer "contemporary quilt". Some people say "fiber art" or "studio quilt" or
"textile art" or "soft painting". But the question remains - exactly WHAT is a
contemporary art quilt? Generally it refers to a quilt that was intended to be
art and hang on the wall vs. placed on a bed. Although some art quilts might
also be bed quilts.

What is Art?

As contemporary art quilts are "art"
it's good to think about what art is when trying to define them. Of course
defining art is difficult but the definition I prefer I read on Alyson
Stanfield's Art Biz Blog"What is art? . . . art is the deliberate creation of
aesthetic sensations. Art is a work of a human being, not of nature. It is not
accidental. It produces something that is perceived through the senses and
results in a personal emotional experience. . . .". . . it is the conscious,
deliberate production of an event or object of beauty (or emotional import) by a
human being, employing not only the skill of the craftsman, but in addition, an
element of creativity--original, inventive, instinctive, genius. An art object
is an aesthetic artifact, deliberately created.Art actually lies in the act of
creation, not in its result."--G. Ellis Burcaw, Introduction to Museum Work,
page 66

Maybe this yearning to wear the title of 'artist' has drawn me to the art quilt... there are no rules to follow and there are a million different jumping off points. Just look at the book section in any quilt shop or fabric store.

For example: Years ago I saw this quilt exhibition while vacationing, I think my mom was with me. It was all of these beautiful 'Bargello style' quilts. This is originally a style of needlepoint/tapestry design (I used to love needlework!) and for some reason I was drawn to it. Upon exiting the exhibition there was a book for sale on creating Bargello quilts, I bought it. I have pulled this book out many, many, many times over the years. The pages are marked and the spine lovingly creased, yet I have never created a Bargello Quilt of my own. It is a great book that talks about construction and fabric selection and gives wonderful pictures of others works. It gives you no reason to not try making one. It even has an entire section on what to do if you screw it up!

Maybe I can transform it into the ultimate quilt of the '10s

(now that just looks weird!)

Add this yearning, my intimate affair with this book that I have owned for maybe 15 years now and a Christmas gift of this great little pack of fabric strips from my hubby and I am off to explore the great wide world of Art Quilting to see what I can come up with. :)

A great selection of colors from Hoffman fabrics Batiks!

AT least I have a great palate to start with.

On a side note... like any other creative person, once I started thinking of 'Art Quilts' my brain started whirring and the more I thought about it the more ideas have started spinning around and around. Now I have more ideas than I will ever have time to try and make!

I wrote down several of the more creative ideas I had and tacked it on my cork board for future inspiration.

Now my mom has come up with a great idea that we will have to try out sometime. She is a stained glass artist and she was thinking wouldn't it be cool to have 2 pieces from the same pattern hanging. 1 made up in stained glass and the other made up as an art quilt??? The possibilities are great! We could make it into a 'challenge' of sorts.

So many ideas, so little time!