11/26/18: Work in Progress
I am currently working on creating a textile collection inspired by swimming, using wall targets and the "T" on the bottom of the pool as motifs. Focusing on shades of blue, I am dying the fabric with fiber reactive dyes and with the shibori method in an indigo bath.
I enjoy swimming because I love the feeling of water, so I am creating these pieces to illustrate representations of water.
Here are some photos that I took that are serving as inspiration to my work:
I made this logo for the textile collection by writing my name with wavy handwriting.
Swatch 1: I stamped Presist as a resist in order to make the tiled targets as "T"s. I used tape a resist to create the diagonal lines and section off parts of the fabric. I used three shades of blue dye, and created a watery texture on the blues by applying a thick, unmixed discharge that took some of the color out and created shades of green and light blue.
Swatch 2: For this swatch, I dyed fabric in an indigo bath using the shibori method and then cut the fabric into strips and sewed it together as a patchwork swatch. The shibori turned out much lighter that I hoped for because the indigo bath was not healthy. Because the shibori did not have as much vibrance and contrast as I wanted, I added contrast by using royal blue thread to sew the pieces together on my sewing machine.
Swatch 3: For this swatch, I directly dyed the fabric blue, then stamped darker blue tiles across the swatch. I beaded targets with tiny, metallic seed beads. This 13"x18" swatch has approximately 1,000 beads.
Detail photo of the metallic beads creating the target motif.
Swatch 4: I used shibori to dye the fabric for this swatch. I cut a light piece of shibori into square tiles, and sewed them onto a dark piece of Shibori as appliques. I used the Nui Shibori technique by stitching the fabric and pulling the threads tight before submerging the fabric in an indigo bath.
Detail of the tiled target appliques.
11/27/18:
Swatch 5: For this swatch, I used tape as resist and then directly dyed the fabric with fiber reactive dye.
Swatch 6: For this swatch, I used tape as resist and then directly dyed the fabric with fiber reactive dye.
