Design Concept:

Taraxacum officinale………….. What a pretentious name for the common dandelion.  We love them as children, presenting them to our mothers in drooping bouquets.  Then adulthood sets in, and we learn that these harbingers of early spring are not allowed in a well-groomed lawn or garden.  The dandelion police prescribe a regimen of eradication, involving trimmers, mowers, cultivators, and an endless collection of hoes, diggers, poppers, and claws.  Seems to me, if we spent less time playing the grim reaper of dandelions, we would have more time for quilting, and all the money spent on poison and instruments of destruction, could be spent on fabric

The dandelion is actually a form of lettuce, and was cultivated by our ancestors as food to be used as cooked greens, salad or wine.

The fabric for this jacket is my original design, created on my computer.  Real dandelion leaves from my front yard were scanned on a flat bed scanner. They were enlarged and printed on treated cotton broadcloth with an ink jet printer.  The fabric was treated with Bubble Jet Set, which makes the ink washable. A fitted jacket was made from dandelion leaf fabric, and channel quilted onto batting. The jacket was then encrusted with individually quilted three-dimensional dandelion leaves.  These were attached to the jacket by quilting along the veins of each leaf.  The shapes of the leaves define all the edges of the jacket.  The leaves on the sleeves were left loose, and drape half way down the arms. 

The star of the show, of course is the brilliant yellow dandelion blossom.  The petals of this blossom were made from 18 yards of crepe backed silk satin, hand dyed in five shades of yellow.  The silk was cut into bias strips and sewn to the long circular skirt in sixteen concentric rows from top to bottom. 

To learn how to make this giant blossom, I studied dandelions close-up, by laying them face down on my flat bed scanner and enlarging them two thousand percent on my computer.  

Under the jacket is the calyx of the dandelion: a silky green shell with a leafy bottom edge.  The leaves were cut with an electric stencil cutter to seal the edges of the polyester fabric, and form the individual sepals of the calyx. 

After a few days as a yellow blossom, the dandelion will close up one last time and open again into a sphere of silky, white fluff, which will catch a breeze, and float, gently, onto the perfect, green, lawns of your non-quilting neighbors.  The cape is lined with white eyelash fabric.

Exhibitions:

• Masquerade: Bernina, 2002-2003 Fashion Show, Houston TX and traveling
• Bryerpatch Studio Gallery, Paducah KY, 2008-2013
• Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts, (retrospective solo exhibition) Cedarburg, WI, January 14-April 12, 2015

Publications

• Fashion Imagination: Masquerade, Primedia, 2002, pp.32-33