FOUNDATIONS REVEALED COMPETITION ENTRY
Autumn Leaf Dress
(click images to to enlarge)
Outline the story …
Recently I've been experimenting with making clothing from recycled materials such as old books, VHS tapes, newspaper and when I saw the beautiful leaves beginning to fall off the tree's I knew immediately what my next project would be!
So I went out, gathered the leaves myself from the floor of my local forest and got crafting.
My aim with the dress was to create something beautiful out of things that would otherwise degrade into the earth, capturing the feel of an autumn tree and the variety of colors found in the season.
Outline the construction…
The fabric for the dress base is an old curtain lining. I hand dyed the lining in my kitchen sink (my first time doing this!) to make it brown so that it wouldn't stand out to much if it showed between the leaves.
The dress was made from a pattern I created myself by duct taping my bodice them adding a circle skirt. It zips up at the back and has several boning channels over the seams and center front which I used plastic boning in.
The leaves themselves were sealed using a home made mode podge mix that stopped them degrading. To get them to lie flat I steamed each leaf first before painting it with the mix in batches on my living room floor, a process that took a week on its own!
To attach the leave my original plan was to sew them however even with the sealant they quickly tore. I tried several methods to get them to stick to the fabric. I tried mod poding them directly on, using double sided tape, but in the end it was a glue gun that worked the best. So I spent six hours straight sticking each one on individually, laying them up piece by piece starting with the large at the base of the skirt and the smallest on the bodice.
I think it came out stunning and have rarely been so proud of a piece of work!
Love this. Can’t believe sticking on all those leaves only took six hours – would’ve taken me six weeks and a mental breakdown!
Wow, a dress completely covered in leaves! It looks great on you. I’ve wanted to make a garment from unconventional materials but it gives me a headache to even think about how to connect everything. Nicely done!