making connections

setting aside a piece of the seepage-dyed fabric from last week, I quickly grabbed it back again

something in the way it landed in the basket caught my eye, a soft fold halfway down the cloth and immediately I thought of Martha's dress

for those that don't know about Martha's dress, a quick telling...

Martha Black was a prominent figure in Yukon history, having gone to Dawson during the Gold Rush, newly separated from her husband, pregnant and in search of a million dollars in gold, half of which was left to her by a prospecting friend who had recently died

if she could find it

she never did, but she stayed, remarried and went on to become the second woman elected to Canadian Parliament

among other things

she also loved to fish, hunt and collect wildflowers

the museum in Whitehorse has a dress of hers on display from her time in Ottawa

I had photographed it thinking there were some interesting patterns and lines in the embroidery I could copy into my sketchbook for reference, and I also liked the way the gathers of the skirt portion at the waistband resembled pleats

a printed photo of it happened to be laying on my work table one day when I was working with some grey silk 

one of the pieces I picked up was badly creased so I tossed it to the side where it happened to land on said photo - as I picked it up I noticed how the creases made me think of the neckline of Martha's dress...

and I was off

creasing pages in my sketchbook, adding simple running stitch

from that I cut swatches of linen and silk and began experimenting with different ways of making creases...

how to manage them when they connect?

overcast them or running stitch instead?

fold on the top or underneath?

or both?

endlessly fascinating

I took a larger piece of brown silk, folded a deep crease for a v neck and added chain stitching

the shibori-painted water fabric is a reference for her love of the Yukon river along which her and her husband George went in their boat, fishing, hunting, and searching for the wildflowers she loved so well

and so I come back to the beginning of this post, back to the cloth landing in a particular way

I grabbed this sketchbook, flipped to this page and laid the cloth where you see it

for reasons I don't know the colour of the dress was off in this print but it's a perfect match for my 

ink-painted fabric

and when I pulled up the original photo of the dress to show here, I again noticed the "pleated" effect of the skirt portion

which led me back to the ice

the basis of this work is centred on the overwhelming love Yukoners have for the land

it's a large territory with few residents, a population of just 46,000 for the entirety of it and most of the people who live there travel it widely, spending a lot of their time in nature, fostering a deep, fierce love for all of it

I have always said the people of the Yukon clothe themselves in their love of the land

wearing it like a second skin

essentially, I'm wanting to explore various elements of clothing in a way that references an element of the landscape by noticing these connections 

each to the other 

gosh I hope that makes sense!

today I found another photo of Martha, this time in a wool coat with a deeply notched lapel… I'm thinking mountains, a range of them... and the deep notch?

well, I suppose that could be the Chilkoot Pass, the one she hiked over… first though, there’s work to be done, with  ice, pleats, folds and tucks