Artists Statement
The craft of an art piece is just as significant as the final piece itself. The craft discipline an artist chooses to employ is a key role in the making of a garment. In the past, garments were made from crafts based on utilitarian roots that were based on needs, rather than on desire. Today, artists utilize a variety of different craft disciplines on the basis of providing different qualities to their work. For my piece, I wanted to draw upon a traditional crafting technique on an iconic garment. I ended up deciding to make the iconic babydoll dress using methods of quilt making. There’s something beautiful and feminine about the babydoll dress that attracted me to it and I thought that quilting was the perfect method to extract that feminine quality from it.
The babydoll dress first came into light during the year of 1942, where designer Sylvia Pedler attempted to alleviate the fabric shortage from the strain that World War II’s soldiers had on the nation’s fabric supply and the garment manufacturing system. The babydoll dress was meant to represent female liberation from the emancipation of corset like silhouettes and the strictures of hemline etiquette. The babydoll dress is defined by a loose garment with a high empire waist and a skirt ending above the knee. On the other hand, quilting had existed long before the European settlers had existed in the New World. Quilts were originally strictly a utilitarian article used for providing warm covers for beds. They could also be used as hangings for doors and windows to keep the cold out.
The first task to employ was creating the quilt. My first idea was to sew together strips of fabrics vertically to create a quilt, when I realized that this particular pattern wasn’t sticking true to the traditional quilt patterns of the times. That’s when I started doing more research and came across the log cabin quilt. Officially characterized as having a classic geometric pattern usually evolving around a square by sewing strips in sequence varying the values between light and dark. I followed up by using a top stitching technique on the quilt with a traditional scallop pattern using an omniarc quilt ruler. Once I had an ample supply of the quilt necessary to make it into a dress, I continued to form the quilt into the shape of a babydoll dress to get the silhouette of the iconic garment. The biggest challenge presented itself in the making of the quilt. Quilting, as I learned throughout the process, is a skill that requires a lot of time and patience. I spent a lot of long nights putting the quilt together and adding the scallop top-stitch on it made it all the more tedious.
In the end, I’m proud of how my quilted baby doll dress came out. I learned the techniques of such an intricate craft discipline and learned the methods of quilting. The craft discipline that one chooses to employ plays a big role on the meaning of the garment. For example, the quilting aspect of my piece demonstrates a type of femininity and soft-like quality that the baby doll dress portrays. I think I was successful in taking a utilitarian based craft and using it to enhance the contemporary relevance of an iconic garment.
Critique Questions
What other crafting disciplines could i have employed to enhance the meaning of the babydoll dress?
Do you think the colors I choose to utilize emanate work with the babydoll dress?
Was there a better way to represent my craft of quilting on this garment?
