berries!

I've been experimenting more with natural dyes lately...these are cotton plain weave fabrics that I dyed in blackberries (purple) and strawberries (pink with watermark or tie-dye). I'm not exactly sure what happened in regards to the imperfections, but I feel that they are "happy mistakes."

I ended up using the more consistently dyed parts of the fabrics to make our Goddaughter's birthday gift: Berries Provincial Sundress.

I appliqued the flowers and beaded their centres with tiny clear beads.

My hope is that she "plays in the dirt" in this dress!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Ruth!

I look forward to dyeing silk organza, using this berry dyeing technique, for my upcoming women's clothing line:

malvar = stewart

2010 Exhibit

This exhibit ran concurrently with the fashion show. Pieces are from the Y Collective 2009 show: COLLAPSE

Materials: silk organza with nuno felting and handspun wool yarn. The sleeves are shown as collapsed.

2010 Y Collective: SKIN

On Stage: 2010 SKIN

Both pieces on stage with the blue "veins" lighting through the farthingales "skeletal structure"...check out the video above!

Backstage: 2010 SKIN

My two pieces for The Y Collective 2010 SKIN
category: Vulnerable vs. Protective

Back detail

Grommets for the corset closure.
The organic feeling of the fabric worked nicely juxtaposed with
the metal grommets

Experimenting: dyeing with used tea bags

This year, for my Y Collective pieces, I decided to use all of the used tea bags that Will and I have been consuming for the last few weeks (yes, we drink a lot of tea). I've always wanted to experiment with dyeing some of the silks that I love to work with, but I don't like to use chemicals if I can help it - part of the "eco" in me.

Here are some of my dye swatches, using silk organza and cotton.

Thanks to some suggestions from my amazing fibre artist friend, Amanda, I played a bit with binding coins and chopsticks, using wire and rubberbands. I was quite pleased with the effect that the coins gave with the patina.

As a result...when constructed into one

of the bodices for one of my SKIN pieces.

On this piece, I layered dyed silk organza over dyed plain cotton weave to give the piece a more ethereal feeling; kinda like "cells in the body or just below our skin"

This bodice is part of my "protective" piece.