Our annual gallery fundraiser at work was last night.   I don’t have a lot of time to make very elaborate pieces of art, so this is my goal each year, to make a dress to wear to this event.  This is based on a vintage-inspired pattern, with some tweaks.  The fabric is digitally printed silk/cotton from my friends at Spoonflower.  The same scribbly circles from the skirt show up smaller scale on the top although as a very subtle color variation (you can’t really see it in the photo) and the fabric has a lovely silvery sheen with the green.

The image I based the fabric design on is a photo of a pile of video cables.  I love the juxtaposition of 1940’s inspired dress with digitally printed video cable design.  My friend Jay does something high-tech with keeping TV stations running and sent me a couple dozen photos from his last trade show gig that were pictures of coils and tangles and piles of bright colored video cables.  I love that I have friends who don’t think I am crazy when I send messages like “OMG, I need that photo to make a dress, can I use it please!?”  Ok, he might have thought I was crazy, but he sent me that photo and 15 more.

I had a lot of fun walking around last night and talking about the dress and the design.  Two of the people from our local printing company (who do the newsletters and things for the center) wanted to know all about the printers and how many colors they use.  Because I work at a place where I am surrounded by some amazing artists, at least one person commented on the hand-picked zipper (where else would that happen to you?) and everyone needed to touch the fabric.  On Tuesday I will show it off to a highschool class we are doing a residency with.  They are coming to dye some fabric with me to accompany their own Spoonflower printed designs.