Silkwood

It is a pleasure to be able to put closure on a project that has eaten up so many studio hours. Daughter Michelle came over today for a fitting and to model for me so I could get some pictures.
Silkwood is a sculptural wearable representing the contrast between inner vulnerability and external resilience and joyfulness.

It is made of artist dyed habotai silk layered with Thermore synthetic batting and quilted nearly forever. . . .

I began this project with great trepidation but it has been far more successful than I dared hope. There were so many opportunities for failure - working with so many layers of such fine China silk (which moves all over the place and is really challenging to work with!) Replicating the color in my dyeing was also a big challenge, and I used every single inch of the fine silk I dyed for this piece.

After it was all quilted and all the edges were finished - I took the risk of applying paintsticks to the exterior surface. This was very scary - (actually - working on this piece was all very anxiety inducing), but having quilted it all successfully - and without any serious problems - it seemed kind of crazy to take an additional chance by drawing all over it with paintsticks! First, I masked off the branches, but the root system was so complex and narrow that I had to just go freehand.

I plan to do more work with the paintsticks and to add more beads. I expect I'll be sewing beads on this thing for the next several months!