Shadows
2016
Digitally printed polyester pique.
I had the photo studio set up for another big project shoot, and I realized that I hadn’t had a chance to talk about this dress that I made this spring. The pattern is a modified version of the Davie dress by Sewaholic. I love the way this one fits and I have made several versions of it. The fabric is Spoonflower’s performance pique.
The design is a combination of cut painted paper and text. The paper design started out like this and I actually used it in a fabric collection of “Fish Market” designs that I have up at Spoonflower.
I layered two copies of that cut paper together and then cut text from one layer. The text is the closing speech delivered by Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear…”
Why that text? Because I like it. And Midsummer is my favorite Shakespeare play. I wanted to do a text based design, where it wasn’t something necessarily readable, but text was a design element.
I manipulated the colors, but you can still see all of the texture of the painted papers in the design. The tie is made from a small repeated section of that aqua with black polkadots pattern you see below.
A little note about the fabric. It’s polyester, and I feel like I spend a lot of time defending things for being polyester. This is awesome polyester. Seriously. Comfy, soft, breathable, unwrinkleable, machine wash, amazing print quality. There’s nothing negative on that list. I understand that there are yucky polyesters. There are also horrific wools, nasty nylons and even some unwearable cottons. So this is a little bit of a soap box and a little bit encouragement to not judge a fabric by its label.
Thanks for sharing how you did this! It is a wonderful dress design!