MFA Monday 1/17/2011

It is Martin Luther King day.  One of my Facebook friends stated that "Its a day on, not a day off". So I'm in my studio working and reflecting on how blessed I am to not have to endure as much of a fight as Dr. King and others before me had to.

Sooo...the goal is to bleach out some more fabrics, create some stencils, and come up with some new re-mixed printed fabric to work with.  I really need to nip my usual creative "traffic jam" in the bud today.  That's when I have so many ideas that I end up spending a great part of the day thinking and end up getting nothing done.  My major review will be here before I know it.

 I recently played around with free motion embroidery and reverse applique. Here's what I came up with (of course I must go through the steps):

I started with a pre-printed fabric:


I bleached it out and dyed it in Khaki Rit dye. I dyed a lot of fabric on this day to get rid of all of the Rit dye I had.  I'm upgrading to Procion dyes...the good stuff!

I cut the shape of a simple long clutch and layered the brown fabric (I used the wrong side as the right side), a pre-printed fabric, white cotton muslin that I hand dyed, and a layer of heavy interfacing.

Here's a close up of the free-motion embroidery (through all layers) I think it came out pretty good for my first time and the fact that I didn't have the correct foot for this type of embroidery.
I'm going to purchase one though...and better thread. 

Here I cut through the brown layer to reveal the red, and the red to reveal the pink.
I want to fray it up some more.

Here's the (somewhat) finished product.

I admit, I rushed through this because I wanted to see what it would look like after it was made into something. I didn't even line it yet, and the white zipper has got to go. Overall, I am pleased with the outcome. I can see some beading being added to make it look a little less like scarred up flesh (even though that was the inspiration).

Already my mind is going wild with the possibilities. I'm toying with the idea of going back to my fashion design roots and incorporate some full scale art garments into my body of work. I can see using this technique as a detail of some sort...even better, I can definitely see myself working this into some MASHULU merchandise. Hmmm...