A Few More Fabric Experiments

Today I went into class feeling like shit. I didn't get any great ideas from all my drawing and painting last night, and spent the better part of the evening having a really difficult State of the Union discussion with The Boy that went until 2am.

I had decided to run with the theme my teacher suggested (peacocks) and to my dismay, I'd come up with nothing I liked. I painted, I printed, I did hideous things to fabric all morning long. Finally I decided it was time for a coffee break. Nothing takes care of your woes like some caffeine, and a few people asking if your quiet morning is the result of sleepiness or something more. It's nice to feel cared about, even if it's just a casually friendly classmate's kind of caring.

I came back to the print room wanting to try something different. So I stopped drawing literal illustrations, and began crumpling up fabric and smearing dyes around until I got something I liked.

The results of these experiments used the colors I kept pulling together for my peacock illustrations, but used them in a less obvious way. And when I smoothed out my crumpled fabric I was reminded of origami. And while talking to my new favorite gay boy, I arrived at the conclusion that I wanted to do menswear tailoring with my brightly colored fabrics.

So I took out a book on origami, a book on menswear, and a book on Pucci (just for good measure) and I'm trying to work from there.

Here are my favorite results from today's experiments in Heat Transfer Printing:

My original test that inspired my new theme:


A follow-up test using a sheer fabric and overlaying fishnet:


A variation of my colors and print method:


And lastly, I shoved this fabric into what used to be a fishnet stocking, tied it up unto a ball, printed it, squished it in another direction, printed it, took it out of the stocking, squished it and printed it again, and did it once more for good measure:



So, yes... peacock colored origami menswear-inspired womenswear. We'll see how it goes....