I had so much fun making this little collection! Sometimes I get into a zone with certain pieces, and dont want to stop….which can be hard on the body considering the amount of work at a machine. I go from floor to sewing table back and forth, squatting and cutting etc, so that helps with the sitting, but its still a lot of pressure on my back.
The pieces always speak to me and tell me what they want to be, and sometimes I fuss and fuss with something, till I rip part of it away and go with something else, and it feels as if that was the Spirit of the piece trying to tell me that whatever I was doing was not Its Intention to Be. One of my favorite things to do is to upcycle t-shirts with funny, cute, unique, or inspiring things on the front, and turn them into playful dresses, tunics, or hoods. So this collection became the Garden of Gethsemane, in reference to some deeper esoteric stuff in our Dream these days, mixed with the fact I wanted to use a bunch of floral fabrics I had stocked up, as ruffled hems. So I went crazy with my cotton and elaborated on a design ive played with for some time now.
I like to make virtual fashion show videos to honor each collection, mostly for myself, and the creations…..they are like little children one births, and a video is easy to archive than a whole bunch of photos. Plus, they are fun to make, and really brings the spirit of the clothes alive. I can link them to my etsy listings so that interested viewers can see how the item of clothing moves on the body, etc, which photographs just cant accomplish no matter how great they are. So the whole Clothing process for me is many layered. If I dont stop myself from making a collection gigantic, it is overwhelming trying to get everything ready for listing( photographing, video, measuring, inspecting, tagging for the Warehouse Art Gallery, listing to Etsy…..and thats all AFTER the sewing itself is completed). But when I look at a pile of things that exist that were not there before, seeing colors and patterns and textures patchworked in playful and vibrant ways that give new life to the materials they are made from, that had been abandoned to their demise, along with all the stories held in their seams….I experience an ecstatic bliss that is not unlike when I dance in trance in embodied mediation. Sometimes as I am at my machine, I am overcome by surges of Joy and even surprise, I am in the Flow state, and am so ridiculously grateful that I took the risk all those years ago to Live the Life I Love, to sacrifice all for the sake of Creation and Expression and Embodiment of my Spirit in Play, and to have the great blessing to earn my meager living from my own hands, as my own boss, on my own Time, and by sharing my gifts with the world.
I have much to say about the act of fabricating itself, and the art of the Seamstress, which is a shamanic thing really, and as Time opens its mouth to let me breathe into it more and more, I will slowly fill the threads of this Ether Web with my Musings. For now, here is the video for my latest collection, all available on Etsy or locally at the Warehouse Art Gallery.
BlissNinja 