I spent a few days fabricating more dyed/printed muslin, and refining the bodice/skirt design. I decided to keep the overall outline from the first version of the bodice, but not the three sections. I made the skirt, cut flame-shaped edges from the tiers of the skirt, and ruffled each tier to make them stand out from each other. And I started work on the back.

And voila!

front of new muslin for Phoenix Rising

back of new muslin for Phoenix Rising

I like this a lot. There are a bunch of changes that need to be made, one of which is to ruffle the yellow layer of the skirt to give it more volume. I also need to figure out what to do with the right side of the skirt front (the left side of the photo, of course), redesign the back, and work out the transitions at the sides. I also need to dye and phoenix-print some more muslin, this time a dark red. (I am not sure dark red will work, but you never know until you try, right?)

I am also considering adding drapes. In particular, a drape thrown over the right shoulder with a solid yellow background, with phoenixes shading from gold to orange to red, would be lovely. But it would also be beautiful to add a red drape on the lower back, completing the “phoenix” visual in the bodice. (The two halves of the bodice look like “wings of fire” to me, and adding the tail would be a nice touch, I think.) I don’t think I can have both gracefully, so I’ll have to model both and pick one.

I’m definitely not happy with the back side of the skirt, and will likely redesign it completely. Also a task for the next few days.

And Monday I leave for ANWG, the Pacific Northwest’s weaving conference! Looking forward to meeting lots of weaving friends, old and new.

I spent most of yesterday tinkering with the design and mostly hating it. It didn’t feel right, no matter what I did. Finally I sat down and thought about why I wasn’t liking it.

skirt muslin with phoenixes flying different directions

Here’s what I realized:

• The organic flame shapes on the top weren’t working well with the rigid phalanxes of phoenixes at the bottom.
• The phoenixes and the bodice were battling for attention, so the eye didn’t know where to go.
• While the top was well aligned and felt harmonious, the phoenixes were flying every which way in chaos.
• There wasn’t enough color difference between the layers of the skirt, so they blended into mush.

I spent some time thinking about how to fix it, and reluctantly decided that there really wasn’t any way to reconcile the top with the bottom. Since I wasn’t about to give up the phoenixes, the beautiful flame shapes, no matter how lovely, had to go.

You may recall that I had experimented with simulating a painted warp by monoprinting roughly-painted thickened dye in gradated colors. Also that those prints hadn’t worked with the flames. But could they work for the new bodice? I hauled them out to try.

And here’s what I wound up with:

phoenix rising muslin, version 1 vs. version 2

Obviously version 2 isn’t done yet: I’ve only laid out the colors, really. But I like it better, because the lines are more harmonious, the bodice is much simpler (no longer fighting the skirt for attention), and it just “feels” less busy.

Plan for today is to dye some fabric a deep golden yellow with just a touch of orange, and screen print it with orange phoenixes as in the photo. I also want to paint some fabric in yellow, orange, and red so I can better simulate the diagonal expanse of painted warp that I’m visualizing from the dummy’s top right shoulder (top left of photo) down to the waist at bottom left (right side of photo). It’s currently represented by two pieces of fabric because I didn’t have a piece with the correct color changes, but it should really be a single smoothly flowing piece.

And then, of course, I need to lay out the lines for the bodice, so it isn’t just roughly-wrapped fabric. And figure out the sides and the back. And so on. But I am quite excited about this new direction.

Much progress lately! Thursday and Friday I dyed four lengths of muslin in various shades of orange and scarlet, and yesterday I screen printed the yardage with a phoenix pattern to mimic the handwoven fabric that will be used. This morning I began draping. I’m still roughing out the very broad design, and don’t expect it to be finalized until sometime next week, but here’s my process so far.

First, I tested to see whether a painted warp would be more interesting than solid colors in the bodice. Here’s the original bodice:

starting to draw lines on the torso

I had mimicked a painted warp by monoprinting some fabric with a mix of yellow and orange, with broad bands where the strokes of orange and yellow overlapped. I then cut a piece out of the monoprinted fabric and put it on one section of the yellow, like this:

muslin with one simulated painted warp section

I didn’t like it. I thought about it and eventually realized that the problem was shape vs. color: the striation of the orange-yellow color transition blurred the shape of the orange flame. The original was all about the flame shapes, and the addition of color transitions blurred that, making an unclear design.

Still, I wasn’t quite sure whether the painted warp effect could be used in this design, so I added a second piece of “painted warp” fabric, this time in orange-red:

musllin with two “painted warp” sections

Now I was quite sure this wouldn’t work: the edge of the flame was lost and the fact that the lines were going in different directions produced complete visual confusion. So I went back to the solid fabric.

Next up was the skirt, which was to be made of phoenix-patterned fabric, transitioning gradually from orange at top to scarlet at the bottom. In my first attempt, I kept the fabric on grain, which forced all the phoenixes to fly in the same direction: up. Here’s what it looked like:

muslin skirt, with all the phoenixes flying upward

This doesn’t work. First, it’s pretty boring, visually – the different skirt tiers all blend into each other, looking like a single skirt when they should be distinct. Second, it looks rigid, in a piece that is all about flow and movement.

So I switched it to have the phoenixes flying in different directions:

skirt muslin with phoenixes flying different directions

I like this better, tentatively speaking – it has more motion, and you can easily distinguish the tiers of the skirt. The phoenixes are still flying generally upward, moving the eye up the dress to the torso, but less rigidly. It feels more like a flock of birds swirling in the sky. So I am going to work with this some more.

(Taking the fabric off grain will force me to underline the fabric with something stable and on-grain, but that’s fine with me: I had planned to line it to finish the edges, and a soft china silk should stabilize the fabric while still letting it flow.)

Obviously there is a lot left to do – I haven’t finalized the basic lines yet, much less the flame-shaped borders, and have not even thought about the sides and back – but it’s a good start. And it’s still early in the day, so I have time to do lots of tinkering!