A Hybrid Sleeping Bag (Three-toed Dragon Boro Yogi)

One of the components of my second Magic Diaries cloth, which I began on January 1, 2012, is an opened pillow case. It is the base that everything is woven into in the entire bottom half in the image above. It is actually the thin inner cover of a fibre fill pillow. Light and fly away and grey and stained.

Finding things like pillows, blankets and sheets along the river is provocative. And it happens all the time. Below is a pillow case that I opened along the side seams. I found it embedded in the river bank, full of sand. It had roots growing through it, screws rusted into it, and yet still had its tag: polyester cotton blend, made in Turkey. The dark stains on the upper right are paint, too. It is over two yards long.

Inspired by Jude Hill's most recent workshop, Contemporary Boro 2, I decided to work on a garment. At first I thought the cloth at the top of this post could be a lining for a garment; and because so much of the cloth above is made from stuff left behind by people sleeping out rough, I wanted to make a sleeping garment- what I see called a yogi, a kimono-shaped garment to cover a sleeper.

But then I found this shirt two weeks ago at an abandoned camp site from the late spring, hanging in a tree. It is torn in part and covered here and there with duct tape. I left it for a week to see if anyone was missing it. This is it after washing it and removing the tape.

This is a cheap and poorly made shirt; the seams aren't straight, the hem was not pressed before it was sewn, the finishing on the seam edges has long knotted tails. This is made by someone working quickly, very very quickly. The print is kind of horrible, sinister. And yet, the shirt makes me think of Chinese dragon robes. Magnificent garments worn only in company of others wearing their dragon robes, each robe a record of the wearer's status relative to others. (Relative to others with robes who, together, composed a class exclusive of everyone else.) A robe bearing a three toed-dragon reserved for those a step below those wearing four-toed dragons and so on, up to five toes. 



Fake Dragon Robe; silk; Goodwill maybe 1987? Brocade.



I had to inspect the dragon on that horrible shirt left hanging in a tree at a camp, left draped in a bunch over a branch. It has three toes. And it is somehow just magnificent to me. And so, of course, I've decided to make a Dragon Robe. But to merge it with the yogi. To make a kind of hybrid garment where sleeping out rough, boro, rags and symbols meet. This is the front.

The base is the pillow case from above, cut in half. You can see on the left hand panel that the original hem from the pillow case is not let out yet. The fronts are lined with a blue sheet I found in the park last winter, it had been made into part of a tent. Almost all of the cloth is found, but I am adding bits of silk sari strip, and have some silk from one of my mom's old blouses, and a pink rayon trim from a destroyed blanket my grandma made. And the back is the Magic Diaries cloth at the top of this post. Once it is all assembled, after the front panels are completed, I can laminate scraps into the inside. Maybe even someday it will be reversible.