Eco coat - Turangawaewae Recycled

Modelled by my granddaughter - Charlotte

It began as statement of identity as a sense of place (Turangawaewae) from the inspiration of the gay Producer Roth who commissioned a coat (with a much longer train) for an opening of the New York Metro. It became the focus for my Level 7 Diploma of Art and Creativity with a theme of Sense of Place as an identity and as a garment. It is a statement of recycling. All the fabric is reclaimed cotton sheets. The leaves eco dyed using various mordants and sourced from my garden. They are applied with gifted bead embellishments and highly quilted. I was encouraged to put it forward for consideration at World of Wearable Art and while I thought the style was too “traditional” for what they would be looking for I did submit it. It did not get past the preselection phase but i still think it is a WOW piece of clothing.

This garment began as an extended vision of personal identity as part of a series of art pieces expressing identity as a sense of place - turangawaewae. That is a sense of independences and belonging to a specific home base. Literally translated as Turanga ( a place and waewae - to stand ) turangawaewae is where we feel especially empowered and connected. It is our foundation, our place in the world, our home. The reclaimed nature of the materials used brings its own extended meaning. Sheets are a protective medium just as a garment covers our nakedness so too does this garment as to our sense of connectedness and materiality. By using reclaimed fabric the importance of sustainability and eco concerns is an underlying factor. The garment has been constructed from reclaimed cotton sheets. The leaves have been printed botanically onto mordanted cotton sheets using a variety of mordanting methods. These have them been attached first by ironing mistyfuse on the back and then cutting out and ironing them onto the sections of the coat pattern. They have then been hand stitched to the cut out sections of the garment.. They have been embellished with gifted beads and then free machine quilted to generate the effect seen on the garment The substrate is reclaimed/recycled sheets and they too contribute their story. Sheets are a universal covering that accompany us throughout life from swaddling as a baby to shrouds at the end of our days. They are part of our most intimate moments in health, in sickness, through sexual encounters and private coverings, giving us comfort .

Slowly Making Progress

My labour of love on the eco coat installation is getting there. I am embellishing the leaf prints with tiny beads - some seed beads and some a little larger. Once I have that done I will work on free machine quilting the negative spaces between the leaves and assembling the coat. I am hoping to have it pretty much done by the end of February all things being equal. Of course that is tempting fate as there are lots of things that could disrupt my progress

Hello I am back

I haven’t written in my blog for quite some time. In June my husband contacted sepsis from pneumonia and it settled in his right hip replacement of 25 years ago. He spent 8 weeks in hospital while they removed his hip, scraped out the hip joint and put a temporary place holder in. When he came home He could barely walk and needed toileting, showering and dressing plus I needed to pick up all those little household tasks that don’t go away including those he normally took responsibility for. As a result my time in the studio has been limited. I did begin part time on a Level 7 Advanced diploma of art and creativity with the Learning connexion (distance delivery) and have been working on a coat with a long train. True to my ethos of recycling I have used repurposed cotton sheets from the thrift store and eco printed these with leaves stored in my freezer. I applied misty fuse to the back of the ecosyed strips before cutting out the leaf shapes to apply to a modified pattern that was created from two commercial patterns

Soft Sculpture Vessels

Having sat with Rob and slow stitched the sampler of various natural fibres. I then wrapped the sampler around some iron pieces and put the whole into a strong black tea solution. The iron in the bundle darkened the fibres considerably - in fact more than I had intended. I left the bundle in the tea solution for two days before removing and allowing to dry at room temperature. I decided I didn’t like the sample with the saddened colour so I decided to make it into soft sculptured vessels. I had some dried out beech leaves from the back lawn and I soaked these in water overnight and then sandwiched and stitched them between black organza. In doing this I found the process worked well and wondered if drying the leaves first and then rehydrating them was like drying natural weaving material that needs to be dried first and then rehydrated to prevent shrinkage of the original material. I am keen to experiment a bit more with these concept.

When I think about it Susanna Bauer who does amazing work with leaves and crotchet always dries her leaves first. A lightbulb moment perhaps.

These vessels are softer than the earlier sand covered vessel as I didn’t want to cover up the stitching and the applied leaves so I used gel medium to provide body to the vessels. I measured around some pvc pipe and stitched these into a tube and then used the base of the tube to create a pattern for the bottoms. For a bit on fun, I stitched feathers around the top of one vessel. The taller one is a piece of crotchet that I just mounted on some fabric and then rolled and left in the same tea solution but for a much shorter length of time. The fabric used is recycled cotton sheeting from the thrift store

Soy Milk as a Mordant

I have learnt a lot about the use of soy milk as a fixative and as a mordant during my study of earth pigments. Primarily to use soy you must use fresh soy milk that has been made that day from beans soaked overnight and blended with water prior to use.

I had tried soy milk as a mordant in earlier eco dying attempts but never been very successful. That was because I tried to use off the shelf store bought soy milk. So i decided to give this ago.

The example above was made using scoured cotton and soaking the cotton in fresh soy milk for about 30 minutes before making a bundle and steaming it. I omitted to give this fabric a tannin bath before using it so the liquidamabar leaves have not printed well but the maple, cotinus and forest tulip leaves have all transferred successfully. The cotinus leaves were fresh but the others were taken out of my freezer and rehydrated before use. I think a tannin dip would have further enhanced all the prints.