This book is inspired by my mum’s autobiographical stories. See more here.
To a certain extent it was about finding a way to hang the dresses. The whole Five Dresses project (still ongoing) appealed to me because of mum’s stories, because of what the dresses meant to her (love, support, belonging, recognition), and also because of what dresses mean to women and girls. I wanted to hang the dresses, but i wanted to do something more. I found some quotes about what dresses mean, and they are handwritten on the back of each dress.
As a “maquette”, which all of my works are now, this is a good start
Each dress hangs off the brad on each concertina page.
I think there’s more to do on this conceptually (although i probably won’t go back and correct this particular maquette). here are my extension thoughts:
- integrate the quotes into the design (print onto the “fabric”?) these are just cut with the cricut from a calendar
- I like the wayy some of the blue and white randomly cut calendar dresses “disappear” on the white background – you’ll see it in the video
- get a better hook system. it’s not obvious to the “reader” that they can hang the dresses from the hooks, and unless I add in a few “washers” to hold the brads out a little, it’s hard to make that happen.
- I did have the problem of the coat hangers being a tad flimsy with earlier versions. This 250gsm card is better, but I may need to reinforce it (glue backs? make the hanger bigger in the cricut).
Here’s the video. It’s in 2 parts because every now and then I push the stop instead of the unpause button, and this is good enough!
And here are some photos of the product in progress.
