Imprints in Nature - Garment development

Hello!

It's been over 2 weeks since I last wrote on here, so I've got quite a bit to show on this post. I'll try to keep it brief but interesting...

I've been at home over the Easter break, meaning lots of opportunities for walks to collect objects and flowers for Hapa Zome. I love collecting things and photographing them in collections to observe and record my experiences

Over the Easter break I wanted to develop and start to bring together a collection of children's dresses and womenswear. I had a rough idea in my head of how I wanted the garments to look- raw edges, creased fabric and a casual Wabi Sabi aesthetic. Because of this, rather than meticulously plan and cut patterns for each garment, I found myself naturally just taking a length of cloth and draping it over a mannequin to see how it fell. I then pinned and tacked gathers and folds in place until I got my desired shape. 

Below are a series of 'in progress' photos of my garments far. I will post photos of my final finished collection pieces when they are done, these photos are purely to show development.

I tried bringing in natural objects to the garments such as these catkins around the neckline. I like the look of these but they could be quite impractical and delicate. I also stitched on some Hapa zome flowers for subtle detail.

Referring back to the Shashiko technique, I combined patching and hand stitch with some Hapa zome on a child's dress (see close up detail below)

I found the Hapa zome technique worked beautifully on cotton voile. It produced a more abstract, watercolour effect as the colour bled slightly.

Now that I have a collection of garments in progress, I can work into them further, adding stitch and other details, over printing and patching, and just seeing how they develop naturally.

I should be posting more regularly now that I am back at uni again, so I'll keep you updated!

Until next time,

Bryony 🌱