22
May
Hopi Bird Silk Designs Dresses
Hopi Bird Silk Designs - Three Dresses
Red Hopi Dress - Peach Pinafore - Grey Hopi Pinafore
Red Hopi Dress has two front silk panels - black/red on white, and red/white on black. Coordinates with a red linen skirt and black viscose print used in the long red dress design. Vogue pattern used: V1234 by Sandra Betzina.
Peach Brown Pinafore has pink/orange/brown abstracted bird and gecko design in sandy colours from Hopi pottery inspiration. No pattern. Shape copied from a dress bought in France. (Pinafore Sold)
Grey Hopi Pinafore Layered cotton panels of 'Per Una' skirt recycled with front silk panel of Hopi Birds with feathers and native American sayings. All dresses modelled by visiting Spanish teacher guest Marian
Grey Hop Pinafore - Design Motifs
Bird designs are 'curved' exactly as the originals on Hopi pottery, but applied to a two dimensional surface of Habotai silk. Feathers were added around the birds together with a selection of embroidered Native American quotations.
Printing Experiment: Texture of gold on grey is made using cardboard print block. Dried corn cob leaves which have fine narrow ridges were glued onto a cereal packet cardboard, varnished (acrylic water based) 3 layers. The maze leaves fibre formation has quite pronounced ridges, which resulted, when printed, in natural looking printed lines. I used epaissisant thickener with gutta as a printing paste applied to the cardboard printing block, then pressed on to the silk, and dried before adding the grey dye. The end result after steaming was mostly a blur, but still provides an interesting painterly background texture, which could be developed with different colour overlays, where overlapping lines would create extra colours.
Native American Quotations embroidered on silk:
"Walk lightly in the spring: mother Earth is pregnant" ~ Kiowa
"Plants are our brothers and sisters; they talk to us and if we listen we can hear them" ~ Apache
"After dark all cats are leopards" ~ Zumi
"We will be known forever by the tracks we leave ~
Red Hopi Bird silk painting
Dress side panels show red/orange/black on white ground, and red/orange/white on black ground.
The vogue pattern facilitated side extended pieces which hang well in silk. Red linen bodice is made from a skirt. Polyester red/orange print used for upper and center panel.
I've always been intrigued by Native American culture and found images of abstract bird designs of the Hopi Indians applied to pottery. They reached a height of decorative abstraction, adapting bird designs to fit over any curved pottery surface; a brilliant applied design, in natural pigmented black, terracotta and cream colours.
