An ocean story

An ocean story

By Xueqi Chang, Wanyun Gao

This is inspired by many things, especially a patchwork quilt on display in this exhibition which reminded me of the little quilts my grandmother made for me as a child. These were exquisitely made using lots of little fabrics and containing the love of the one generation for the next.  Patchwork is the stitching of scattered fabrics together to create new fabrics. Reusing small or damaged fabrics also expresses the theme of sustainable development. Is there anything in your life that could be remade into a creative new thing?

While researching ideas we found a fashion designer, Paco Rabanne, who uses tiny plastic discs linked by steel rings to make dresses. The patchwork reminded us of the scales of fish and mythical creatures, such as, mermaids and we decided to use this to tell the story of marine pollution. 

We used water bottles which are common in marine pollution for the main material, cut them into the shape of 'fish scales', carved some scratches into them with scissors, and then grilled them over the fire to change their shape to simulate the look of fish struggling in pain. We chose second-hand green threads, handwoven to look like fishing nets and used a 'patchwork' process to join the 'fish scales' and 'fishing nets' with some second-hand buttons. They were used as a three-dimensional decoration for the garment. 

For the shape of the costume, a water bottle was placed over the mannequin, based on a scene of a sea creature trapped in a pollutant. The bottle was baked over a fire, which would make it fit snugly over the mannequin. The whole costume is then finished by gluing the finished 'collage' decoration onto the 'costume'.