m.lilydesigns
Feminine Reverie
Feminine Reverie threads together tradition; a slip dress patterned to my grandmother's lace bralette using beads rescued from an unraveling 20s style dress belonging to my great grandmother. The work explores fiber manipulation techniques on silk charmeuse fabric through shibori dye, beading, and floral imprinting.
The silhouette, a fitted top flowing into a full hem, is enhanced by billowing, lightweight, 100% silk fabric. The garment is designed with pastel colors reminiscent of a rose garden; cream, light pink, and subtle hints of light yellow. The design uses flowing, curvilinear forms in both the dye and beading pattern, mimicking the curving silhouette of flower petals. The lace and beading details lend to the overall delicate, dreamy, and feminine aesthetic.
Process
The development process offered valuable lessons on the properties and reactions of dye and silk fibers and demonstrated how integral trial-and-error and problem solving skills are to the design process.
The silk was too delicate for the shibori stitch resist technique, the needle causing runs and holes. I switched gears and used itajime shibori, a form of shape resist shibori done with pleating. Thiox resist was used in combination with the itajime shibori to create the desired shapes.
Patterns inspired by Art Deco era and the original dress design inform the style of beading. Pearls in particular are an ode to the unattainable ethereality of old Hollywood and Gatsby era glamor.
Floral imprinting using a range of green, purple, yellow, and pink flowers on undyed, unwashed silk was successful. However, floral imprinting on fiber-reactive dyed fabric, both unwashed and washed, caused some kind of chemical reaction where the transference of the natural flower dyes left a brown or dark green stain.
Purple carnation
Unwashed, undyed silk
Purple carnation
Soda ash washed, fiber reactive dyed silk
