Anel Heyman – New Zealand

Fusion

Category: Traditional

Description

When I read FUSION I immediately thought of colours fusing together to create another colour. I thought of the swirls that are created when two colours are added to a swirling bucket of water and how beautiful it looks until the two colours fuse into one completely different colour. I wanted to recreate those swirling colours in my headpiece and decided to use two vibrant colours, make them join in the middle and turn them into another vibrant colour. The lines of the headpiece has also been kept soft and flowing to create the desired effect.

Materials

• Paribuntal capeline hood
• Buntal flatten capeline
• cotton covered wire
• cotton thread
• invisible thread
• Procion dyes
• metal headband
• silk organza

Techniques

• I drew out a pattern on the straw and used a sewing machine to sew along the lines before cutting it to reduce any fraying.
• I then hand stitched the wire along the edges, rolled the edges of the straw and hand stitched it in place.
• I prepared a Procion Red MX-5B and Procion Blue MX-7RX dye bath to dye the two pieces from one tip to about halfway towards the centre.
• I then mixed both red and blue dyes together to form purple and dyed the remaining bits of the straw.
• I bound the metal headband with silk organza and pinned the two pieces in place.
• The wired edges were manipulated by hand until it reached the desired shape.
• A slot was cut into one side of the straw to push through the other side in order to “fuse” the two together where the colours meet and turn into purple.
• Everything was securely sewn by hand onto the headband.