Buena Suerte (Tiger Jumpsuit)
A collection of hand-embroidered tiger patches sewn onto a jumpsuit. (Personal project, June 2022 - January 2023)
Project Brief
I do a lot of pen and ink drawing, and I'd recently developed the style of tiger I used on the patches. I've always enjoyed drawing tigers, since big cats have very expressive body postures and because I enjoy hatching in the stripes, but I've recently become drawn to them as symbols of strength and power. Tigers, after all, are fierce and iconic. Inspired by garments made for kings that I've studied in art history classes, I wanted to make a bespoke piece of clothing that gave off a powerful, regal aura when worn.
What I Created
I decided to incorporate iconography of the American Southwest, my home, into the garment: the self-sufficiency, grit, and ingenuity that characterized the wild west seemed appropriate. I leaned into symbols tied to the idea of luck, eight balls and cards, as well as stitching "buena suerte" (meaning "good luck" in Spanish) on the back as a sort of warning: you don't mess around with a tiger.
I designed and created all of the patches by hand, drawing the patterns, cutting and attaching all the pieces, and hand-embroidering them with embroidery thread. I did not make the jumpsuit; I used a Dickies brand women's jumpsuit. I attached the patches to the jumpsuit with a combination of hand sewing and machine sewing.
Takeaways
This was a challenging and long-term project. I completed the patches over six months, and it was my first attempt at doing embroidery at all, so I learned a lot about embroidery technique as I went along. For as frustrating as the project was in some sections, it was incredibly gratifying to try out a completely new medium.
Most importantly, though, creating this jumpsuit gave me confidence that I can finish up longer projects and bolstered a confidence that I can learn whatever techniques and mediums I might need for projects in the future.
Process work
Ideation through Doodling
I began this project with sketches. I'd been playing with the idea of covering a jumpsuit in animals for a long time, but I had initially envisioned I'd paint them on, so I did my early brainstorming with watercolors. After some exploring, though, I began working towards more and more simplified forms and realized that creating patches would allow for a more comfortable and more washable garment. So, my brainstorming moved to keep a more limited color palette and line-based style in mind,
Eventually, I began to develop the tiger sketches and realized the attitude I conveyed with them would suit well to creating a bespoke embroidered jumpsuit, so I began sketching black and white tigers, testing out different positions and placements on a jumpsuit, and playing with iconography of the wild west.
Making the Patches by Hand
The project started with the templates, which I drew by hand on parchment paper. (Creating the templates on translucent parchment paper allowed me to flip them over, ensuring my symmetrical patches would actually be symmetrical). Before beginning the patches, I created a "test tiger", making a smaller patch to figure out how I'd transfer the design onto the fabric, how thick of a thread I needed to use, what embroidery techniques I'd be using, etc. I even used the test tiger later on in the process to test how the patches would go through the washing machine and if the red jumpsuit would bleed onto the satin fabric (after a few washes, it doesn't). It proved to be a valuable test pilot throughout the whole project.
To create the patches, I traced the pattern designs onto white satin fabric, which I'd ironed onto a stabilizing backing, with a heat-erasable pen. I sewed the traced pieces of satin onto the black cotton fabric I used as the backing, folding under the edges as I went to hem the edges. Then came the bulk of the labor: hand-embroidering on the black lines of the patches, a process that took about three months. Finally, I cut the patches out of the black fabric, hemmed the edges, and affixed them to the jumpsuit.
The two standalone eight ball patches, although I'd designed them for this jumpsuit, ended up going on another project due to practical concerns. I'd intended to put them on the back pockets or the knees, but I realized that they'd likely become filthy and would be subject to a high amount of wear and tear at either location, and I couldn't find anywhere else on the jumpsuit that felt balanced with the rest of the design. Instead, I've sewed them onto a jacket.
The process of creating the patches.