Napkin Art and Clothing as Art

While we were catching up with an old friend over vegetarian southern Indian food, Iris amused herself with my pen and napkins replenished frequently by the kind staff. This one particularly amused our friend.
Picture her asking, "Where's the sun?", with a big grin on her face. (That's a cloud in the upper left hand corner with some ink bleeding through from the reverse.)

"I don't know, maybe it was cloudy like today."

She flips the corner back and
peekaboo!

We also went to LACMA family Sunday with a playmate and her mom. They learned how to make printing plates from pieces of foam. On the first one, I wrote Iris' name backwards on the foam. She asked why I did it that way. I told her that the print would be a mirror image of the printing plate. Sure enough, we compared our results to others' and she saw that her name looked "normal" while the others were backwards.

She said she wanted to do another one. I let her work unassisted. While I was chatting with the other mom, Iris tugged on my shirt and asked if the order of the letters as well as the letters need to be backwards. I told her yes and went back to chatting.

The second print had Iris' name exactly right to print correctly. Even the S was right. I was floored. How many 5 year olds can flip and draw objects on their first attempt?

We also made pop-up cards and hit the cafeteria for pastries. Iris was sad that they closed the bookshop next to the cafeteria.

We then enjoyed the "Breaking the Mode" exhibit. Iris kept dragging me around to show me which dresses she wanted me to make for her. Of course, she wanted some pretty complex designs--bustles, Fortuny pleats, etc. But I managed to talk her down to a Norma Kamali leopard print dress and an Issey Miyake Pleats Please piece. I didn't know before today that IM pleated the clothes after sewing. Because I had always seen the polyester fabric prepleated in the fabric stores, I had assumed he also worked with prepleated fabric.

I still haven't made any skirts from her wish list after we saw the "Waist Down" exhibit. Shh. Don't remind her.

links: More about Issey Miyake in Imagery from the past, Iris designs her own dresses at age 4 in Rocket Science