Thursday 20 April 2017

Hand sewn....thousands of stitches

 I sent out simple homework boxes with massive pieces of Japanese slightly crinkled linen to Finland, Belgium, Australia, America and the UK. The students spent hundreds of hours designing and stitching a woodgrain lining for the jackets they would make here in Japan.

Graces stitching was magnificent in its precision and elegance of design.



Here (below) she wears the jacket inside out to show off the lining.



She cut a stencil with her name in a Chinese character for the back insignia on the jacket. The insignia is coloured with soot and a watered down indigo and soy based dye. Here she is wearing it outside out. (properly.)



The jacket was dyed with soot and soy milk instead of indigo.





Really beautiful work Grace.

Zoe had a different approach. She taped on a design then rice pasted resisted it on the linen and then brushed on a soot and soy dye several times to get the nuclear hashtag effect. She brought some soft leather and made white sleeves for the jacket. The lining crosses worked wealth the back design. Gorgeous Zoe.








Claudia worked hard on this soot dyed masterpiece,  Pine & Plum & Bamboo characters wrapped around the bottom of the jacket. A pocket carefully constructed and set in the jacket to add some subtle extra visual interest to the jacket.


More jackets to come.



6 comments:

  1. Super nice and very sewn
    Compliment everyone
    Doris

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  2. the jackets are all very beautiful - clever designs and beautiful work. I would love to hear from Grace, Zoe and Claudia about their individual approaches!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Jilloy, I wanted to do soot grey and the motifs I chose for stencils are Pine, Bamboo, and Plum , all things I have in my garden. The negative of the stencil looked so good we decided to use that and put the positive on the front, the pocket was an afterthought and became a half to show the motif underneath. The stencils go all round the jacket and the indigo lapel has 3 small stencils also, not shown in this picture. It all just evolved as it went along.
      Claudia

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  3. wonderful variations on 'jacket'. i love the individual special touches.

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  4. Wonderful patterns and designs, each one unique and very special.I wear mine all the time, a lady stopped me in the cross-walk yesterday to compliment mine.

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  5. great work and article, keep doing!

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