Photos by Susan Mantle Photography. Click on an image to see a larger version.
I have had the opportunity to fly over the Midwest a couple of times this spring. As I looked out the window while over Kansas, I mused to myself that my work was beginning to look like where I grew up. The landscape is a great patchwork of textures (plowed and unplowed), colors (different plantings and unplanted), crossed by streams, all surrounded by section lines, those huge grids that divide the middle of the country.
My latest clothing designs are simpler than my earlier work in some ways and much more complex in others. I have reduced the amount of appliqué added to the surface but the surface itself has gained richness. Where I strip pieced surfaces before, I am now strip piecing “fabrics” that I, in turn, strip piece to make the colorful landscapes that I have seen from the plane. The seams between the rows of piecing are the “section lines”, defining the boundaries of the work.
Over the years, I have acquired hundreds of fabrics adding to the mélange I call a studio. It has been brought to my attention that perhaps I ought to reduce the amount of things I feel compelled to scrape up around me to make me feel comfortable. Is it time for me to simplify my life? So, I am cutting all these fabrics into strips and sewing them together to make highly patterned “fabrics” of my own creation. I can control the flow of colors and pattern. I can use fabrics that might have gone out of style by carefully combining them with others, camouflaging them among newer ones. I guess this is my attempt at “eco-jimmie,” reduce the piles, combine them and reuse them.
For most of the pattern pieces in my clothing designs, I use the pieced fabrics that I make. For impact, I add some gorgeous highlight fabrics that I have found from several sources. My current favorites are hand dyed and hand printed fabrics by Linda McLaughlin of Weiser, ID and the cottons and silks from Thailand imported by my friend Susan McCauley of Mekong River Textiles. What a feast for the eyes! These pieces all come together to wrap you in luxury. Add a little colorful piping, fabulous vintage buttons, wild bindings and linings, variegated quilt stitching, and you have yourself something pretty special to wear.
Wild Women:Benedict Church Durham Ericson Hansen Jordan Knous Orr Prodaniuk Rappa Teske Uriu Wallis
Reno 2009 Guests:Berg Donohue Hendee Rosser