Indian Culture

For the elephant piece above I used fabric paint onto plain cotton and painted into designs which i had previously drawn on with pencil. Although I liked the outcome I found this process too slow considering the pressure I was under for time.

I tried to stick to traditional Indian colours in my experimental work for a while, such as gold, red and burgundy. 

Above is a piece I created which is inspired by the work Karlee Porter. Porter dyes fabric with a variety of colours and then backs the fabric with padding before sewing into it with black thread; creating a bold quilted effect. Inspired by this; I hand-painted silk with shades of orange, red and pink; backed it with wadding and sewed into the piece a little. I then chose to decorate the piece with black gutta rather than thread.

Above is a hand painted silk which is based on patterns I extracted from my observational studies.

Above are samples of work which I created at Seacourt Etching and Print Workhop in Bangor.

Final Piece

Inspired by the work of Ashi Studio, Rami Kadi and Manish Malhotra I longed to create a piece of work which combined traditional Indian techniques, patterns and craftsmanship with Western styles, laced with a modern and sleek elegance,

For the top, I chose flesh-coloured mesh with an intricate patterns embroidered in royal blue with details of silk painted appliqué and beading. This is to create the illusion of a tattoo on the skin; keeping with the idea of traditional Indian henna tattoos.

For the skirt, I chose neoprene (a thick foam-like fabric which is used for wetsuits) and manipulated large panels of the fabric to create a modern and unorthodox shape. I laced the skirt with hand painted silk, beading and hand-drawn designs with silver gutta; paying attention to the importance of detailing in Indian garments. 

I am pleased with my final outcome, especially considering the difficulties I faced using such difficult fabrics like mesh and neoprene. Using such contrasting fabrics kept my work interesting and I learned many lessons in dealing with problems I was faced with; e.g. sewing heavy embroidery into fine mesh, resulting in rips and tears so I had to learn how to manage this and prevent it. 

Full Portfolio