My Love/Hate Relationship With Dresses

I grew up in the 1970’s when little girls were still expected to wear dresses to Sunday School and family gatherings. 

It was “proper”. And I hated it.

To this day I can vividly remember one particular dress that I despised more than the rest - it was purple plaid with an empire waist - basically hideous, even by 1970’s standards. (just imagine the dress pattern below sewn with the purple plaid fabric on the left)

And to add insult to injury, I had to wear it with white frilly socks (or knit tights - depending on the season), Mary Janes, and WHITE GLOVES to Sunday School!! Can you imagine?! I can still picture my little seven-year-old self seething at the indignity of it all. 

I was very happy wearing my well-worn elastic waist corduroy pants and mismatched shirt - thank you very much. My sister, on the other hand, was a little fashionista and even kept a calendar of what she wore to school every day so she wouldn't wear the same things twice!! (she’ll kill me if she reads this )

I don’t know why I hated wearing dresses so much, but I do have to give credit to my Mom for always making us appear put together and presentable when leaving the house. She and my Nana would make clothes for us (prom and wedding gowns included) and they did instill in me a fabric hoarding instinct that persists to this day.

And then, to my surprise, about 15 years ago the dress imagery started popping up in my artwork. I suppose it was inevitable that the childhood hours spent moping around fabric shops, getting scolded for playing hide and seek between the bolts, and countless hours spent crafting doll dresses from scraps on my Mom’s sewing room floor would have to inspire me eventually. I was already using dress patterns as collage elements in my paintings and on the advice of my mentor, I began creating actual dresses from vintage textiles and embellishing them with hand embroidery. These embroidered dresses took my art in a whole new direction and gained a considerable amount of notoriety in the world of Fiber Art.

And as an artist’s motifs have a way of doing, this little dress form has found its way back into my artwork with my current botanical watercolors. If you look closely you’ll see a shadow of painted embroidery in some of them too.

My “Garden Diary” botanical watercolors are a nod to my Mom, my Nana, and all the creative women in my family who instilled in me a love of fabric, flowers, and all things beautiful. Thank you. 

(In case you’re wondering… despite all these pretty dresses I’m still a jeans and tee-shirt kind of gal!)