When Vexed

Digitally printed cotton canvas from a mixed media illustration. 2026.

In 2026, I was asked to co-curate a mixed media show for the White Bear Center for the Arts. It was a completely delightful experience. We were asked to do a curators’ talk part way through the exhibition. I decided that it would be fun to wear some mixed media art to talk about a show about mixed media art, so I made this dress.

The fabric is a design I made from recycled art. I originally stitched the letters for an alphabet book that I am working on. They are wool felt applique and I photographed each one individually. For this fabric I decided to make a pangram: a sentence that has every letter of the alphabet in it. So I came up with “When vexed with quirky design, calm stitcher jumps for bold azure threads.” I layered the letters with a pencil drawn pattern and another painted one so that the background had some texture and I desaturated the colors slightly to make something a little more subdued. I printed it on a cotton canvas from Spoonflower and made the dress from the Noa Pinafore pattern by Tilly & The Buttons.