Final Project – Allison Traylor

My intention with this project was to expand upon work I’d been doing in another class: this semester I’ve developed an astronomical language in a conlang course, that uses various celestial bodies and orbital eccentricities to communicate. The language is spoken by empirically unknowable celestial beings, who manipulate time and space to create their words, yet we know of them and their language through intermediary translators, who are able to act between dimensions.

I made a writing system for these translators and I thought it’d be fun to make some heraldry for them too, incorporating the writing in some form. Since they are the authority on what the celestial beings are saying, they need something to be recognized by.

My plan was to make one ~ 4’ long banner with appliqué and block printed text, with additional hand painted small text.

 

I ended up going a very different direction with the overall design as I changed the shape, added more applique and colors, and removed the text.

 

 

I machine sewed the applique to the base pieces and then those pieces together. Overall, I feel like this design feels a way less serious, and strangely invokes the shape of pants… which I don’t really mind, but I see pants every time I look at it.

The applique on the front is representative of the Benedictive mood indicative binary star, which begins a sentence to notify the interlocutor that the speaker’s statement is a blessing or wish. The blue arcs on the bottom and top of the banner are representative of the orbits of roughly three planets. On the back is a planet with one moon, which really could be any number of words, I just haven’t really decided which one, and the design is relatively ambiguous: words in the language are planets which are identifiable by several characteristics, for instance, a rocky medium sized planet with two gas rings and one icy moon.

After I sewed the pieces together, I weathered the fabric with sandpaper, a metal file, a metal wire brush, along with a piece of wood to wrap the fabric around and file/sand upon. To make the piece feel as if it were damaged by specific events, I kept my weathering focused to certain zones, imagining what would cause the type of damage I was making. After it was thoroughly worn, I used various brown inks to make it look dirty.

I would have liked to go further with this, but I decided to stop where I was and begin repairing the damage. I did so by darning small holes with thread that was close in color to the fabric, and patching holes with the cloth of the area of damage. I was trying to imagine what significance a piece like this would have, and repair in a way that would be suitable for that level of significance. I did my best to neatly repair (with tiny stitches), without drawing too much attention to the repairs.

Overall, I learned a lot through the construction, destruction, and repair of this piece. It has a completely unexpected mood that I did not foresee: I think my design is in that strange space between fantasy/sci-fi/Disney/artifact, that I don’t entirely know what to feel about it. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed making it, and figuring out how to construct the various components.