For my project, I imagined the future pretty unrealistically from a fantastical point of view. I imagined that we may reach a point where people can live underwater and we as humans start an underwater civilization. Living underwater created endless possibilities of marine life. For my encoded cloth, I decided to create a coral like plush.
This is the finished product! I picture this as a toy / plush that a young child may have because it has many small limbs that are good for grabbing/holding. Even though some may look like spikes, everything is very soft 🙂 My intention was to create three different types of “coral” using three different techniques, but towards the end I decided to make a fourth coral to make the whole project bigger. I wanted to experiment with using different fabric textures and patterns to make the coral feel more lively and playful, as a stuffed animal would.
This was the first coral that I made using the technique of sewing and stuffing many small parts and then hand stitching them all together. I found that this create the most solid, coral like structure because it was easiest to make the limbs protruding in multiple directions. However, this was the most time consuming because I had to hand sew each stuffing hole closed and then attach the pieces together.
This was the second coral piece, I made it by sewing two pieces of fabric wrong sides together. Then I distressed the edges by shredding with the point of the seam ripper to create a fluffy fringe texture. I also attempted to make small holes and pull out some pieces of stuffing to create little wispy pieces that added to the fluffy texture but I found that to be too difficult to put all over the piece. This piece didn’t exactly simulate the coral shape as well as the previous piece but the texture adds to the overall varying texture of the entire piece.
This was the third piece that I made. I made this by taking small arc piece and sewing two lines of basting stitches without locking them. Then I gathered the fabric by pulling the threads so that I got ruffled pieces of fabric which I then sewed together to form one big ruffled mass. I had a little bit of trouble sewing everything together because the ruffles made it hard to find where the edges were and keep track of where I was sewing. I ended up missing a few spots and having to go over them again to ensure that all the ends were incorporated into the mass. This simulated more of an anemone shape which is an essential part of marine life and coral reefs.
This was the last piece that I added on using the same technique as the yellow coral. It is the largest of the four pieces and I feel like when I sized up the pieces, they weren’t proportioned exactly correctly. This resulted in the piece looking more cactus like, but once I put all the pieces together I think it still gave off the coral feel. Since this was a larger piece for the central tube, I closed the ends with circle pieces so that it stood more structured instead of tapering into a straight closed end. This was a little challenging as well since the circle was fairly small and difficult to sew together. I also experimented a little bit with darts for some of the larger protruding pieces so that they bent up instead of just sticking straight up.
Overall, I am very happy with how it turned out and the many textures that were created. The way it all comes together makes it feel very coral like and it reminds me of childhood stuffies 🙂