Always Walk On The Wild Side

Quilted wearable art coat, dress & hat
2000

Fairfield Fashion Show of Wearable Art for 2000-2001. The coat is a long version of Ragfinders Jacket with the back pleat removed. It is done in silks and cottons quilted on Fairfield Soft Touch cotton batting which was absolutely lovely to sew on.

This prestigious show was taken over by Bernina of America and it travels to all kinds of sewing shows around the country. If you have a chance, go to see it. It’s always an eyeful!

A close-up look at the collar edge, which was stitched over and over with threads onto a Super Solvy base (water soluble stabiliser). The front facing and jacket front were just basted wrong sides together then stitched over heavily to create this lacy edge on the collar. A plain heavy reddish zigzag stitch goes down the front and around the whole coat’s edge, another detail below.

This technique is from the Rosemary Eichorn book The Art Of Fabric Collage by Taunton.

The detail below shows the little quilted pocket peeking out from under the free-flowing edges of the coat front.

The dress is 2 layers of Jap silk.

The whole panel was ironed onto freezer paper to keep it completely flat. Black and white photocopies were burnished on with acetone then hand colored with regular wax crayons. It was ironed with a press cloth to set the crayons. The colors were very bright but softened and faded when washed. These have zero fabric stiffness, are as soft as plain silk.

Experiment with this fun technique. More fully colored images are color photocopy transfer which leaves a slight plastic hand.