Sunday, September 8, 2019

Some Hand-Painted Dresses by Carol

I designed some dresses
and here they are.
A few years ago, I got the idea that I wanted to design and hand-paint some dresses. I chose a simple a-line style and decided to airbrush geometric designs on the fabric.

My fabrics were cotton which I purchased from B & J in the garment district. B & J is a well-organized fabric store that makes choosing fabric easy because it's all displayed on large, hanging samples, and you do not have to sort through jumbled rolls of cloth like you do at Mood.

I did a lot of airbrushing in the 70's when I was making geometric, abstract paintings so I knew my way around an airbrush. For these dresses I had to set up a table, lay the fabric down, which had already been cut in to the a-line pattern, and tape off the shapes, being careful to cover the areas that I did not want to paint.
Grasshopper Green Dress with
beads and hat of my own design.
The hat is covered in vintage fabric and
hand-painted cotton.

A friend of mine asked me to supply some photos of my dresses for a book that she was writing on wearable art. I engaged a professional photographer to take photos of me in the dresses. The book never did get made, but I now have a record of my dresses.
Pappillon Dress with beads and hat
of my own design. The fedora is covered with
hand-painted cotton.
Cornflower Blue dress with beads
of my own design. The hat is store-bought 
and trimmed with a flower from La Sirena,
a Mexican folk-art store in the East Village.
Framboise Pink dress with beads and hat
of my own design. The hat is one of my
signature patchwork cloches.
 Beads ready to be paired with dresses.
 In the studio.

I was invited to pose in the Museum of Modern Art
garden for sketchers of all ages.
This is a drawing by a young girl of me
in one of my dresses.

The dresses are a size six and available for purchase.
Thank you to Paul Levitt who helped me for
the photo shoot.

A Bientot.


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