The Barnacle Dress in Tokyo!

What in the world?  One of my dresses made it to Asia!

Esperanza Spalding performed in the Barnacle Dress in Tokyo, Japan this week!

This Titanic-inspired dress is made from kozo fiber and hand-dyed raw silk.  

You can find more information about in earlier posts...here and also here, and below you can see the process of making the dress from start to finish!

Musica e Moda in Italia!

My dresses have been having such a lovely tour of Europe this summer, I'm a little jealous!
Esperanza Spalding performed in the Delphinium Dress in Bard Fortress, Italy on July 21st.

Concert photo by Dan Hallas

You can see more pictures and inspiration behind this design here, 

and also on Esperanza's amazing style blog: Happily Ever Delphinium

You Jump, I Jump

I'm not leaping off the back of the ship but jumping for JOY because the second Titanic dress is done, just in time for the movie re-release this week!  There will be a lovely photo shoot for this dress in a couple weeks, but for now here are some studio pictures:

This dress is made out of kozo and a vintage dress that I disperse-dyed and rust-dyed.

Today begins the last month of school...and my last month as a CCS student ever.  Even though our time together is running out, my memories of the College for Creative Studies will be safe in my heart and

 my heart will go on and onnnnn.

(Haha I had to throw that in there somewhere!)

Inn Style

Here's a little preview of my latest dress!  More pictures to come, I just couldn't wait to share this picture taken at the Ferry Street Inn in Detroit by the lovely Lindee Robinson.  The awesome hair was done by Stein McGee and beautiful makeup by Camille LaMontagne.   Thanks to everyone!

Now I'm working on the fourth dress for my show. I'm going to be experimenting with dying fabric with rusty metal this weekend, so cool!

Dream Weaver

FINALS ARE OVER!!!!

This is my final project for weaving class, another shibori dyed scarf.  I used rayon this time and its feels so nice and light and drapes really well.

Detail:

Some process pictures:

Don't WEAVE Me This Way

This is my favorite thing I've made in weaving class this semester! It's a shibori-dyed scarf. The ends aren't finished yet in this picture, but I'm really excited about it and couldn't wait to put it up!

Here are some process pictures, I don't have any from the very beginning, but first I wove a white plain-weave scarf and then painted it with colored dye.  I had woven in supplementary threads throughout also, which I pulled tightly to cinch up the scarf before I put it in black dye...

So then it looked like this!  After that I cut the cinching threads to reveal the color underneath:

This was so much fun because no one knew what their scarves would look like until they were done, and everyone's  scarf turned out completely different!

Bouncy Skirt

Here is another one of my Marie Antoinette-inspired pieces!
This skirt is made of silk crepe, which I batiked to make the striped pattern.

I bet she couldn't jump very high in this dress... 

Hummingbird Apron

This is an apron I made, the fabric is linoleum block-printed rayon.

I thought it would be fun to show some pictures of how this was made.

First, I carved the stamps out of linoleum.  Don't you just love the attractive apron I'm wearing?  

Then I used the stamps to create the pattern on the fabric:

  

After that I painted in the orange flowers:

Then I dyed the orange fabric to match, and sewed it together! 

Now if only I could cook I'd have a reason to wear it...

Dressing Table Dressy

This is another outfit I made last semester! 

The pink dress is shibori dyed silk and the robe is silk organza with embroidery details:

I made it for my "Art and Artifact" class, where we went to the Edsel and Eleanor Ford house and got to choose anything we wanted as inspiration for our piece.  I picked this 17th century French dressing table:

This table is so beautiful!  The top opens up where there's a mirror and compartments hold powder for wigs.  

This table comes from the time of Marie Antoinette, who was was an inspiration for many of my pieces last semester.

Batik

Despite the burns, toxic fumes, and long hours, batik was my favorite class I took last year.  Here are some of my fabrics!