ELLIE REED - Quilted Dress

Throughout the Spring 2022 semester, while pursuing my AAS in Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I participated in an Associates degree student exhibition displayed in the FIT museum. The exhibition followed the theme, “Crafted”, in which students were prompted to use only muslin fabric and create a garment which focused on the quality and legacy of craftsmanship alone.

Folk art has been described as "the pulse of human existence", by documenting the private lives of mundane people through self artistry and untrained exploration that rejects the limitations of traditional schooling and education. Each quirky piece of American folk art from paintings and drawings, to tramp art, carpentry, and quilting, is crafted by the soul and integrity of a simple life. These pieces admire and document the natural world, while highly emphasizing design to be crafted with purpose for the peacefully mundane everyday life. Like the folk artists who explore form, color, and texture out of curiosity rather than aiming to appease the expectations of the art world, I too explore this human impulse of handmade craftsmanship through my exhibition garment. This garment emphasizes the folk female touch and personal relationship between hand and material, manipulating the most easily accessible fabric, muslin, into a highly decorative exposition of my curiosity and admiration for the women that crafted before me. When proposed the exhibition theme of "Crafted" I was reminded of all the female hands that crafted American at and fashion, and I dove deep into the legacy of American folk art and what a female folk artist represents to modem America.

View the complete journal and physical sample below,