Solar Plexus Dress – While in graduate school at RISD studying Textiles, I learned how to go with ”the process”, and see where it took me. This dress was started using gold wool crepe yarn and thrum, the throwaway multicolored cut-off end strips from a jacquard loom. While crocheting a large circle, I incorporated the thrum in rounds for the colorful start of a dress. Then the circle was hung on the knitting machine in four separate quadrants attaching them together in the knitting process. Resulting in a large T-shape piece of fabric, I proceeded to make a dress on the dress form. The first few attempts were unsuccessful (see one attempt in bottom photo). As a result the thrum (the original inspiration for the dress) was removed and the fabric was draped on the form to create a completely different body-hugging shape. Openings were measured and filled in with engineered knitted pieces which were crocheted together. The name comes from the placement of the crocheted circle.
The making of this dress was how I learned the process I still use in my work today: creating an original fabric and draping it on the dress form to see what it wants to become. It always results in a dress that is much more interesting than what I could have imagined at the start. Completed in 2005, and photographed by Cathy Carver. SDA Award of Excellence, 2007.
