Art To Wear Sydey 2011

At last have completed, and posted, my ATW entry for this year. The criteria stated that the colours of the Rainbow Lorikeet be used, 80% Emerald, 10% Cobalt, 5% Yellow, Orange, Red or colour of choice. I used some Emerald/cobalt shot silk dupion, emerald sari ribbon and silk top from the Thread Studio, masses of glass and crystal beads, hot fix Swarovski crystals, silk organza, Rayon, polyester, cotton and metallic threads in various weights. The very short dress is princess seamed "scrunched" silk dupion, invisible zip (put in with a very useful speciality Bernina foot) and fully lined. The shrug is made from the sari ribbon and silk top layered on Wet and Gone Tacky, overlaid with "Romeo", heavily stitched with metallic, rayon and polyester threads, edged with couched heavy rayon thread (another speciality foot from Bernina for this couching technique) and then dissolved in the bath. Unfortunately I discovered that the Wet and Gone Tacky was very difficult to completely dissolve and there are still traces of it left in the fabric, although not enough to destroy the overall effect, I will be very wary of using it for this application in future.
My favourite part is the neck decoration. This is made from the silk dupion, the design stitched with heavy metallic thread in the bobbin (the large bobbins on the 820 Bernina make this job so much easier, they hold so much more thread), lined with my own hand dyed silk habotai (thanks to my mentor Ken Smith) and beaded with #11 glass beads around the edges and design lines, enhanced with hot fix Swarovski, bugle beads, faceted crystal beads and the two "wings" joined by a jewel cabochon encased in cobalt silk organza.
Some interesting tid bits - I was surprised at the amount of dye that bled out of the green dupion when I wet it to "scrunch" it, even though it had been prewashed, I finished up with more than green thumbs, I had a green bathtub as well.
The sari ribbon, of course, also bled profusely and smelled quite strange for a while. All the silk smelled of white vinegar after I had worked on it, but the odour disappeared after a time.
Off to work now on some interesting machine embroidery projects, and of course a quilt or two.