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It was really fun to see everyone’s demonstrations. These were some of my favourites.

I demoed how to knit in a circle on two straight needles.

I learned how from this tutorial

I knit this project using this technique

After sharing my demonstration, I wrote this reflection:

So this is kind of incredible:

These are little pieces of silk that we boiled with food.

• yellow = turmeric
• pale pinky brown = avocado pits
• pale brown = black bean
• rich brown = onion skins
• blue = purple cabbage with baking soda and dish soap
• white with green lines = purple cabbage with baking soda and dish soap (just not as much)
• purple = just purple cabbage
• pinky purple = purple cabbage with vinegar

These are my cotton samples. You can see that the silk takes the dye better. It has something to do with the difference between protein fibres and cellulose fibres.

There are lots of other dyes to try. I think I would like to try it with my family. Marcus is lucky because his favourite colour is yellow.

Instructable for making orange dye with carrots

I would like to try dying cotton yarn or maybe silk thread since it would take the colour better. Then I would like to try embroidery with it. I might need to do it outside in the summer time though. The smells were really strong.

Passage is a bricolage sculpture of a flying machine that emerged through an exploration of fashion, silenced voices and reclamation. It imagines an answer to the question, “How would a steampunk airship look if it were constructed from Victorian style clothing and metal home decor items?” Building on Leanne Prain’s argument that the things we wear communicate our personal stories, I lash and stitch together the narratives of abandoned housewares and puritanical clothing to create a fantastical vessel that juxtaposes Victorian repression with the wilful and imaginative resilience of steampunk culture. Passage communicates that repressed narratives are sailing forth in a reclaimed guise that symbolizes alternatives to mainstream conceptions and standards.

While the clothing used to create Passage came from my closet, I reworked it in the Victorian style. So, instead of indicating my “financial and social status, religion, political affiliations [or] nationality” (Prain 37), it calls forth stories of female fashion in the 1880s. During this era women’s clothing functioned as controlling packaging that presented women as passive objects (Jerez 53). Dressing the sculpture in this style activates this narrative of control as well as the motif of “the secret” from the gothic imaginary, “always too great and terrible to be mentioned, and already nonetheless common knowledge (Adriasola 110). Passage carries a secret that the dominant power wants to control.

But the flying machine is a symbol, not of repression, but of imagination taking flight–of alternatives born of self sufficiency in trying circumstances. It is emblematic of steampunk reclamation and invokes the narrative of literal and metaphysical reconstruction. The skeleton of this ship is an assemblage built from metal racks, stands and a lamp, all scrounged from thrift stores. I bound them into the form of an airship with hot glue and coat hanger wire–an appropriate material for textile upcycling–in a typical diy steampunk approach (Maly-Schmidt). Its actual re-form-action parallels the restructuring of thought that alternate worlds make possible. It cannot reject the past outright, but builds on the base it provides. In other words, steampunk style and culture is empowering in a reactionary way. Consequently, Passage carries the gothic secret with the intention of exposing it proudly.

The synthesis of upcycled “junk” and clothing into the form of a ship emphasizes the cyclic history of narratives that travel in society. The airship implies, through the gothic fantasy aesthetic, the electronic mediation of this information; it is aloft, unbound by material modes of transmission. The style of the ship and clothing adds an conservative and covert undertone, referencing gothic repression. Yet, lit from within, the message is alive and relevant to those for whom it has not gone out of style. The sculpture’s narrative further inspires viewers who would fashion their own tales. These tales constitute the secret that must be hidden or that participants in a subculture would dare to expose.

Passage illustrates how alternative stories have been rejected by mainstream society. Their reproach has driven these communications into hiding, but has by no means extinguished them.

Works Cited

Adriasola, Ignacio. “Modernity and Its Doubles: Uncanny Spaces of Postwar Japan.” October, No. 151 (Winter 2015): 108-127.

Jerez, Marta A. “Reinventing Female Fashion: From Victorian Apparel to Steampunk Expression of the Self.” On the move: Glancing Backwards To Build a Future in English Studies, Eds. Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz, Jon Ortiz de Urbina Arruabarrena. Universidad de Duesto, 2015, pp. 53-62.

Maly-Schmidt, Samantha. “Steampunk.” Subcultures and Sociology. Grinnell College, haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/steampunk/. Accessed March 28, 2019.

Prain, Leanne. Strange Material: Storytelling Through Textile. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014.

The skeleton

Working through the textile design

Fabric-ation

Of the criteria for the final project, either metamorphosis or tell a story were the ones I was going to choose.

People make some really cool things.

I was desperately wanting to make a sculpture for the clothing reconstruction assignment, but my friends talked me in to doing it for the final.

Proposal for Final Project: Passage

I plan to explore several concepts linked to fashion, upcycling and story. I felt inspired by our class on upcycling textile art and clothing reuse and would like to juxtapose the stories of Victorian Gothic clothing with the concept of a ship. The sculpture will be entitled Passage and falls under the option to “Tell a story” in our assignment criteria. I will draw on the ideas presented in Leanne Prain’s “The Stories We Wear,” in Strange Material: Storytelling through Textile, as well as the concept of “the secret that is hidden” from gothic literature.

The skeleton of the ship will be an assemblage piece, constructed from metal racks, stands and a lamp, all scrounged from thrift stores. These will be lashed together with coat hanger wire–an appropriate material for textile upcycling–into the shape of a steampunk airship, then attired in Victorian style clothing. The clothing will resemble Victorian dress, but will also take on the shape of the ship’s hull and air balloon.

The synthesis of upcycled “junk” and clothing into the form of a ship emphasizes the cyclic history of narratives that travel in society. The airship implies, through the gothic fantasy aesthetic, the electronic mediation of this information; it is aloft, unbound by material modes of transmission. The style of the ship and clothing adds an conservative and covert undertone, referencing gothic repression. Yet, lit from within, the message is alive and relevant to those for whom it has not gone out of style. The sculpture’s narrative further inspires viewers who would fashion their own tales.

Passage illustrates how conservative messages have been rejected by champions of the neoliberal movement. Their reproach has driven these communications into hiding, but has by no means extinguished them.

I am a 3D kinda girl, but I found silk painting very engaging. We used silk scraps to try out tracing first in pencil and then in gutta, a water-based resist designed for silk. We also tried out silk dyes. I went for an abstract design combined with a pallette that reminded me of Chagall. The speckled green pattern was created by sprinkling salt on the wet dye. This works with watercolour as well. I also tried layering the dye to blend colours and learned that if you don’t apply a thick enough line of gutta that the dye will bleed anyway.

Which orientation looks better?

For my “good copy” I chose this picture:

You can see that in some areas I didn’t apply the gutta thickly enough. It forced me to experiment to try and make the yellows and oranges that leaked into the water look like they were supposed to be there. And then the wet dyes would drive the first layer back and I had no idea how far they would go. Even yellow dye would push back darker colours.

I want to go to the aquarium and take a bunch of photos of jellyfish. Then I can practise reducing them to shapes like for a colouring book. Then either use silk dyes or watercolour to paint them.

So I had too many ideas and not enough time. In the end I used some sweaters that my sisters donated and made a puppet for Marcus. I experimented with combining techniques like cutting, splicing, sewing, layering, unravelling and painting. It was supposed to be a lion, but everyone says llama.

It’s really cute. I think the eyes really pop because they are surrounded by the dark cloth from Marcus’ old underwear (ssh, don’t tell).

There could be a long exploration of puppet making in my future.

I checked out Slow Stitch by Claire Wellesley-Smith from the library over the break. The book felt like soft, coarse fabric; it made it special to hold and study it. There were some really interesting works presented.

I love how this one references traditional quilting with the repeated blocks connected with dashing, yet it looks a lot like a drawing. The lines aren’t straight, and the shapes are all a little wonky (academic term of the day) but perspectival illusion is somehow maintained and, viewed in a landscape format, it looks architectural. The muted pallette brings out the richness of colours that would typically fade into the background.

This image shows how different materials work together to create a product that is much more interesting than either would manage on its own. The stitched square seems to float above the background and echoes the angles of the black cross beneath it. It lays behind the tangle of coarse thread ends spread across the top. I feel like it shows how separation and connection can exist at the same time.

We also read The Slow Cloth Manifesto

The whole venture is very supportive of creative process, artistic growth and connection to the natural world. It values the maker, the materials, the process and the viewers. That’s a lot of valuing. Humour aside, I think that might be the most important thing I will have learned in this course. When I engage with making in this way, I am much less influenced by materialism and external validation. I could slow my whole life down to make time for the things that matter.

I had a chance to pick a reading on my own. I chose Karin Elizabeth Peterson’s  “Discourse and Display: The Modern Eye, Entrepreneurship, and the Cultural Transformation of the Patchwork Quilt.”

It details the historical transformation of the perception of the patchwork quilt. They went from being stashed in the attics of antique shops to being displayed in art museums as cultural products participating in the same design practices as abstract expressionism. The journey resulted from the work of Jonathan Holstein and Gloria van der Hoof, who used modern methods of presenting and discussing objects to elevate regard for the quilt in the art world.

It makes me wonder if the distinction drawn between art and craft should be there at all. Does it exist due to a pretentious need for importance among connoisseurs, or did these two pioneers discover that quilts were actually functioning in the same way as modern art works and had only been neglected because they hadn’t been displayed in the right way?

1. It points to a larger issue in any case. So much craft is excluded because traditionally its primary role is functional. But I think it can be both.