Here is a dress that Jen Kao created from some of the fabric I made for her Spring/Summer 09 Collection. It didn't make the runway, but that's o.k. I think it's mighty pretty, but way too short for me! Hope you like it. Jen Kao's website is http://www.jenkao.com if you want to see her whole show. It's very cool.
I really like the way this color choice came out for this print. Lots of different colors, but they go together well I think.
At last we get to see a beautiful jacket made from the brown bomaki satin fabric! It is lined with dark purple silk and has a matching dark purple silk top to wear under it. Looks great in person, feels great too!
Here is my print with a bright tone colorway. Hope you like these three colorways!
Here is the latest print I have been working on. This time, it's my design. I put a ruler in the picture to give some scale to the image. I like the neutral color palette. I plan to do this same print with two other color schemes. Hope you like it!
Here's the second print I did for Jen Kao's Spring/Summer 09 Collection, see below for first print. This one was a lot of fun to work on too. I really liked the colors in this one, especially how the purples and turquoises went together in her print pattern. The print she gave me to work with fragmented quite beautifully. I will be sure to post final pieces made from these fabrics once I have images from her fashion show.
I recently did this print for Jen Kao, a fashion designer in New York City (see Sites I Like for her website). The fashion show for her Spring/Summer 09 Collection was Sept. 12th so now I can post my work. This is a technique I've been working on and I was so excited to get to use it for her! She sent me her print pattern and I worked with it and adapted it to my technique and voila! Hope you like it!
This yellow variegated silk made a gorgeous hoodie tunic. The top was made by Laura McGrew of Tomboy Design. See Sites I Like for a link to her website. She makes wonderful clothes.
Here's some of the green silk bomaki finally made up into an outfit designed and made by Laura McGrew of Tomboy Design, see Sites I Like for a link to her website.
Brown satin bomaki with brown velvet on the reverse. This one is over 7 feet long, more than long enough to wrap around you and have some left to show off. Plus it was fun to make!
Variegated pink and yellow silk bomaki. I am really very pleased with the way this one came out. It's nice and bright in person. I used a 10 momme silk for it, it would be just as nice with an 8 momme as well, lighter weight too.
Black velvet scarf with black satin bomaki tips. It is about 9 feet long, perfect for wrapping up in. Feels wonderful and soft too. I plan on making more out of some of my other bomakis. Keep posted!
A new scarf for the collection. I made the print for this on velvet, then attached it to a purple velvet and voila, a scarf is born!
I recently took a fiber continuing education class and this is one piece I did. I call it Ripples. The colors didn't come out quite as planned, however I am still pleased. I have been wanting to do a 2 yard screen printed cotton piece for several years now, and, since I lack the facilities to do one at home, at least for now, I was happy to find a class where I could work on one. Holly Stewart teaches these continuing education classes at the Kansas City Art Institute (you can go to her website from this blog, she's under "sites I like"). She's a great fiber artist and a fabulous person. I think it's safe to say that if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be doing this right now.
Here is a silk itajime from my class. The little blue/black marks are from the wood pieces I used to press it. I wound up dying this piece three times to get all the colors. It's 4 yards long, and I have no idea what to do with it. Maybe something will come up later.
This is a cotton piece of itajime shibori from the class I took. I'm pleased with the funky shapes on the edges, and I may turn bits of it into another piece. Stay posted...
Sublimation piece from a class I recently took. I'm pleased with it. The heat press didn't like me too much since this was a tied piece that I sublimated solid color into. It was a little too thick for the press to close...
This is a 11 yard long piece of silk that I dyed using the bomaki method. It's too bad you can't feel how light and soft this piece of fabric is. I am pleased with the way it came out. This is only showing half of the width of it. It is a whole 45" wide, though, as usual, you lose the edges of the fabric due to the line where the stitches were put in, so actually it's more like 40" wide usable width.
This time I photographed it all crumpled up just for variety. This piece is 11 yards long by 45 inches wide. ELEVEN YARDS. This is getting big. I like these larger pieces although they take so very much longer to do. It's worth it in the long run I believe.
I did four yards of this black velvet! I am very pleased with the result. Brown and black are always a classic.
This bomaki piece is 6 yards long by 45 inches wide. This image is just a small part of the whole piece. Finally I am able to do larger size yardage. Hopefully somebody out there will want to make something out of it, or of some of the other yardage that I am planning on doing later this week. I've got my fingers crossed!
This shibori piece is also 4 yards long and it was folded then hand sewn into pleats then pole wrapped then discharged, washed, dryed and ironed out. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it in the long run. I think I spent upwards of 24 hours of hand work on just this piece. This photo only shows less than a quarter of the whole piece. I am trying to work on doing yardage, hopefully it will pay off!
As a bomaki goes, I was REALLY pleased with these two scarves. They are both quite long, about 4 yards, which makes them really fun to wear since there are so many ways they can be wrapped around your body. The fire-like tiger stripes are very dramatic.
For these I simply wadded up the silk into a tight ball and placed it into a net bag, then into a mason jar with water and dye and let it sit for an hour! It was surprising what I got when they came out. I think I like the green and purples best.
This piece was predyed then overdyed after I spent a few days tyeing it up into what would become spiderweb patterns once the string was removed. It took a while but it was worth it.
For this shibori piece I tied velvet then used sublimation to get the dye onto the fabric, and an unusual pattern came about!
These are the colors I chose. What came out of my dye printer is what is shown below. So, a happy accident since this one looks a bit garish. Make that quite a bit garish. Unfortunately, this dye printer is not printing off any of my palettes correctly, even the ones that don't look like a pizza thrown under a bus. This printer won't even print magenta or black. It's getting difficult.
Again, trouble getting things to line up, but I did much better this time. I think I will fold it in half and make a scarf out of it. The happy mistake about all this is that this isn't at all what it's supposed to look like color wise. I'm beginning to hate my dye printer. I have been working on it all weekend and its only getting worse about printing even a test print. I'm almost getting blank pages! Sigh. Any tips out there? Anyone?
It's awful hard to line up stripes with a pattern in them. Ultimately this was a failure due to my misalignment of the stripes. Maybe I can use parts of it later.
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