Slips with dimension - ch 6

Looked at giving my contemporary slips some 'animation' while still allowing them to be attached to a background. The first method uses wire to give shape to the slip as in stumpwork motifs.

6.1

A wire silhouette of the shape was trapped between 2 layers of synthetic organza and free machined with satin stitch to cover the wire and decorative stitching added in the interior.

6.2

The shapes were carefully cut out (to leave intact negative images) (6.2)

6.3

and the wire manipulated to give dimension (6.3 and added to a previous sample in 6.4)

6.4

I then tried creating dimension in the slip without the use of wire, but exploiting the heat reactive nature of the synthetic organzas themselves.
6.5 shows the slip repeatedly cut by soldering iron from a 6-layered stack of sheers.

6.5

Each stack of slips was reordered and then gently treated with a hot air gun to partially melt and distort the shape.  The background sheers were left unmelted to preserve the distinct negative shapes.  It has a bit of a Monet's waterlilies look about it I think with the white negative shapes like reflections on the water.

The slips in 6.6 below were sewn from a sandwich of dyed silk georgette around a painted piece of Tyvek.

6.6

Once they were cut out, they were gently heated with the hot gun until the tyvek inside began to shrink and distort. The natural silk 'shell' was not affected by the heat so interesting little puffy 'fortune cookies' were formed which could be applied to a background, as in 6.7 and 6.8.

6.7

6.8 detail

The georgette in these samples was quite translucent so the wrinkled tyvek could be seen inside.  I think a rather different effect could be achieved by using a thicker or at least more opaque material, or by initially embroidering on the outer fabric before the sandwich is made - definitely worth sampling further.