The goal of this look is take a simple one piece swim suit and a towel that might drape around the neck and build onto it the textures of a sea horse. I’m really hoping to expand the towel form into something like a heavy cape form. I’m really intrigued by pile and tufting techniques to give the overall garment more form, as well as shibori dying techniques to accentuate the sea horse texture.
I spent about a week trying different shibori dying techniques for this look. The first technique experimented with was clamping — I used a laser cutter to cut my own shapes for the clamps. Because I used a cotton terry cloth (towel fabric) for the dying I found that I didn’t get a very consistent result between layers. I finally settled on pole rapping technique which you can see in the photos bellow.
At the end of my week of dying I quickly developed a pattern and simple technique for the tail piece. The tail was made with bubble tea straws, rivets, bungee cord and laser cut plywood.
