Living Skirt Art

One of my favorite ongoing series is Skirt Fixation’s Living Skirt Art, where she sews a skirt based on a skirt in a piece of artwork and then tries to recreate the scene. When she announced she was having guests to the series I jumped on board immediately. I love the idea and couldn’t wait to find the perfect inspiration piece.

I had originally been leaning toward a skirt in a John Singer Sargent piece as I have always admired his work. In the end, the Siesta has two ladies which would have been more difficult to recreate and happily I stumbled upon the works of Kay Crain.

with permission and via

The beach paintings in particular grabbed my attention and as I was looking through the slideshow of her work this Girl On Beach stood out as THE painting. As I read through Ms. Cain’s “about” page I was thrilled to read she takes inspiration from Sargent which felt like kismet. I emailed her to make sure it was okay to use her photo in this post and she seemed excited about the project as well which made me even more thrilled with the inspiration piece.

So Bean and I set off for a beach photoshoot nearby. I added some extra flare to my Ruffled Arch Skirt pattern view B (the one without the ruffles) and it was just flowy enough to catch the wind in the same way the painted skirt did.

For the top I used my Paneled Sunsuit pattern view E with the free sleeve add-on. I had been dreaming about those puffed short sleeves and can’t believe how they turned out. The only alteration I made to the pattern was the chop the long sleeve to a short length and add an elastic channel at the end. The channel is made the same way the other ones in the pattern are, but if anyone’s interested in a tutorial feel free to shout out.

I have to first mention that Bean does NOT like to have her belly exposed. I’m sure if this continues into her teen years I’ll be thankful for it, but it means crop tops like this are generally a no-go. She insisted on pulling the top down or the skirt up the whole time hehe. However, we proceeded to have a magical photoshoot in spite.

This time of the summer, the jellyfish move up the Chesapeake and so there were tons of them around this area during our shoot. Bean new we weren’t going to actually swim on this beach visit due to the jellyfish, but I told her it was okay to get wet and have fun along the shore.

She was a bit hesitant and nervous about a jellyfish “bloom” (thanks Octonauts!), but she dipped her toes in at last.

She had a little more courage with each wave that came through and I even had her do some jumping shots so she’d be distracted and maybe the top would work its way up her belly a little in the meantime. We do what we have to right?

The water came up and splashed the skirt until it was soaking wet and then she had a blast.

At one point she was sitting in the waves and laughing, but by then I had put away my camera and joined her. She thought it was such an adventure to be in the water without a bathing suit!

I’m happy we took the time to have this little adventure. Bean starts Kindergarten on Monday and the summer is quickly coming to a close, but this day won’t soon be forgotten.

And lest you think we were on some remote part of the bay, when I face the camera the other direction you can see the Bay Bridge in the background, hehe.

So what do you think? I think we captured the spirit of the Girl. Ms. Crain enjoys taking old photographs and breathing new life in them through paint, and I think it’s fitting that we took one of her paintings and brought it back to life again for this series.