LAARNIE...IN HER OWN WORDS

NUNO FELTMAKING GARMENT CONSTRUCTION - PART 3

ADVANCED 3-D ART

silk, dye, wool roving, misc. fibery items to embedd, misc. fabrics, & misc. embellishments

Hello everyone! 

It's a pleasure to be able to post on Mrs. Sposa's blog again.

 Now... on to the dress!

 Just as a heads up, 

I had gone into the assignment not knowing what I was going to do.

 I had an idea of what color scheme I desired,

 but no design to work off of.

 So the dress itself is as spontaneous as the weather here in California! :) 

The main fabric pieces that have the interesting textures are silk fabrics that I first dyed using RIT dyes,

 and then I Nuno felted over top them. 

I later came back to the purple fabric and created a non-objective design using the free motion quilting technique I had learned in the stitch paper quilt assignment.

 I also tried to bring in blues into my color scheme

 as I had them in my Nuno felted fabrics, 

so I dyed a small piece of silk, 

Nuno felted it, 

and then used it as a dress strap that goes right around my neck. 

As I worked on the garment, 

I just knew that it needed something... more. 

So I went to several craft stores in search of embellishments 

that were elegant and in my color scheme. 

The beading,

 the flowers, 

 the buttons, 

and the main jewel on the garment's neckline had served their purpose well. 

I wanted to make the neckline the most extravagant part of my entire dress.. 

so I dyed a doily I had found in the blue RIT dye.

 Then I brought in several beads and flowers to frame the jewel piece I had sewn in. 

As Mrs. Sposa had mentioned in the previous post,

 I had found a lot of fabrics in the fabric bins that we have at school.

 I discovered a nice purple fabric that I had used in the skirt,

 and also this  flowing, 

sheer, 

 maroon-y fabric with butterflies on it that I really liked.

For the back,

 I had no idea how I'd go about the closure. 

Originally, 

I had wanted to do a nice corset lacing, 

but the fabric wasn't strong enough to support that backing. 

So I talked with Mrs. Sposa,

 and we came up with the miraculous closure that you see here. 

I lined the buttons up across from each other 

(although when worn, it gets a little funky!)

 and a suede cord wraps around them to create a pleasing design,

 and an effective garment closure.

 Along the edges of the buttons are some of the beads that I had mentioned before. 

On the sides of the dress, 

I have attached this wonderful silk that I had dyed in the blue RIT.

 It brings the color all around the dress. 

I have also embellished the sewn areas with some flowers and beading. 

As for the petticoat portion of the dress, 

I came to the conclusion that having the petticoat fabric show wasn't attractive at all. 

It looked bunched, 

weird,

 and a little obnoxious... 

so I added a bit of beading to bring in some elegance,

and tie it visually to the other colors in the dress. 

A fun little fact about the petticoat fabric 

is that all of it had been used to Nuno felt with!

 Some of this netting was used when I felted my fabrics for this assignment

 while the other pieces had been used by the Intermediate 3-D art students to felt their vessels.

 They had all sweetly given me them to me to use in my assignment, 

which is also one of the reasons why the dress itself ended up being really, 

really poofy! 

Thank you for reading!  :)