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My brother, Ken Fowkes, is an amateur photographer in the Bay Area. Rather than publishing, he is very involved in clubs that produce judged exhibits, so he is well recognized in the local community. Because printing art work or photographs on fabric is a mature industry these days, and I have often wanted to do this with with one of Ken's photographs, and his MEDALLION picture was just the opportunity!

He created this image in Photoshop from a light box photograph he took of a dried oak leaf. I wanted to create a circle skirt from the medallion using Spoonflower, so he  scaled the original photograph to stretch across the 60" width of their yardage.  Spoonflower only sells fabric in yard increments, and this full circle meant I had more than a yard, so I had him add three 12" medallions to the length of the fabric for hats, to give me a total of 2 yards. Waste not want not!

I chose a shear chiffon to print the fabric on, as the drape was perfect for a circle skirt, and the semi shear nature of the fabric would give the resulting skirt a contemporary look and feel. In order to give the chiffon hat medallion some needed body, I paired that with a band of denim from a pair of thrifted jeans. Those jeans also inspired the up cycled design for the coordinated purse. To finish off the ensemble, some bronze and brown leather paint from Turtlefeathers updated an old second hand pair of clogs.

As we approach the 2019 fall season, this project felt like I was turning over a new leaf in this partnership with my brother. We originally had plans to photograph this ensemble in the Ancient Oak Forest in Palo Alto, to complete the oak leaf circle of the medallion, but that has been postponed until January 2020, when the forest is at at the height of its vibrancy. To tide us over until then, we have scheduled a studio session with two models next month, so stay tuned for the next  page of this book, as we turn over another leaf!