Pillows to DYE for!

Although I have been teaching art a long time, I never get tired of it.  In fact, this year, I developed 2 new courses which both reflect my long time interests...fashion drawing and sewing.  The first semester, the girls created fashion designs using Adobe Photoshop and the second semester, they worked exclusively with fibers and fabrics, sewing, dyeing and printing their own fabric.

I am totally in love with the things they have produced and just had to share their latest project.
The sides with the flowers are the fronts and I have shown some of the back sides of the pillows too.






This student used her hand dyed and block printed fabric for the pillow front.
She hand dyed the ruffled corner pieces.



 







 

The girls who took this course didn't know how to thread a need or sew a few short months ago, but now some of them told me that they were able to sew a hem, a button,

 and fix a hole in a sweater.  Our school does not offer home economics, so I, thought this course would not only allow them to be creative, but it would provide them with some practical skills as well .  One girl said she is going to continue to do some dyeing over the summer.  Maybe a few more of them will continue to sew.  Some of the students definitely stepped out of their comfort zone in this class, but they are more confident student designers and seamstresses.

Beautifully brilliant tie-dyed pillow front!

 

This student used her batik fabric for the back of the pillow and
made another piece of batiked fabric to match the front.  She added a hand dyed
yellow flower for the front of the pillow.

I love the look of the flower this student created from her tie-dyed fabric

Paper Fashions

One of the new courses I offered this  past school year was a fashion design class using Adobe Photo Shop.  In addition to designs created on the computer, we also did a few hands on projects to break the course up a little bit.
I saw something that inspired me and thought, with some modification, it would be a project the students would enjoy with good results.
My first dilemma was whether or not to have the students create the mannequin.  I toyed with the idea of having the girls create it themselves by sewing it, but I knew given their lack of sewing ability, that wouldn't be possible.

 

Cut newspapers

 

 Then I thought we could use dish washing detergent bottles, but I finally decided on paper mache dress forms I saw at Michael's.



Tissue Paper and Printed Tissue Paper Covered Playing Cards

 So I just put it on the student supply list.  My next thought was how I would raise up the mannequin torso. I wanted to keep costs down for the students, so I picked up various styles of candlesticks at the local thrift store. My choice of materials for the dress design would be papers of different types. For my sample design, I used tissue paper and Mod Podge.

When I introduced the project to the girls, I told them they first had to design their dress on Photo Shop. We talked about different types of paper and how paper could be manipulated. I told them to bring in any types of paper they wanted.

Tissue Paper and Decorative Scrapbook Paper



Painted Newspaper and Magazines



Painted and Woven Construction Paper



Tissue Paper



Tissue Paper and Fringed Construction Paper



Napkins and Tissue Paper



Tissue Paper and Decorative Scrapbook Paper



Tissue Paper and Decorative Papers



Cardstock and Tissue Paper

The results were much better than I had expected!  I was very happy with the girls' designs, the way they used the different types of paper, and their artistry.