Process

I have a bunch of scraps of fish netting so I decided to stitch it together and make a dress with it. My idea with it is to show a person wrapped up and trapped in a fish net. Kind of like a contradiction because usually the person would be setting the nets and catching the fish, I want to add shells and hooks and corals and other things in the net showing the pain fish endure and also all the other things the fishnets pick up, they don't only pick up the fish they want they want, so much more is trapped in those nets.

 Bottom trawling is an industrial fishing method where a large net with heavy weights is dragged across the seafloor, scooping up everything in its path – from the targeted fish to the incidentally caught centuries-old corals. Bottom trawls are used in catching marine life that live on the seafloor, such as shrimp, cod, sole and flounder. Bottom trawling is unselective and severely damaging to seafloor ecosystems. The net indiscriminately catches every life and object it encounters. Thus, many creatures end up mistakenly caught and thrown overboard dead or dying, including endangered fish and even vulnerable deep-sea corals which can live for several hundred years. This collateral damage, called bycatch, can amount to 90% of a trawl’s total catch. In addition, the weight and width of a bottom trawl can destroy large areas of seafloor habitats that give marine species food and shelter. Such habitat destructions can leave the marine ecosystem permanently damaged.

Started by cutting the nets into pieces that I could work with easier and then stitched them together to make the basic shape that I wanted. Just to start with so I can improve it with more nets. 

I then started adding more layers of netting to make it thicker and less see thru. And I attached a huge hook to the back of the dress sort of being like the person was caught.

I then decided to change the directions of the netting to make it more stylized. I then started to add shells and hooks to the dress. I'm still in the process of getting more shells, hooks an bobers to cover the dress in. Also still need to stitch up a few more places that I have held together with clips.

I also have this old sponge I found a while back on a beach and wanted to use it, maybe as a purse to go with the dress.

(Sorry for the thing in the background kind of matches the netting and makes it hard to see the dress)