1. Classroom Educational Component
Red Dress
Craft Kit
Classroom Educational Component

2. About the Artist Susan Taber Avila
Susan is an artist, professor, and the Chair of Design at the University of California, Davis.
She has shown her work in Argentina, China, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Mexico, Swaziland, and the UK as well as around the United States.

3. Matters of Dis-Ease: Susan Taber Avila
In Susan’s work, she uses the idea of the red dress to represent women’s heart health, as it is used by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. Heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women. Heart disease takes the lives of more women annually then all types of cancer combined. The good news about this, is that there are things you can do to keep your heart healthy and avoid heart disease. The three key ways to stay healthy are: eat well, exercise, and don’t smoke.

4. Eat well.

5. Exercise.

6. Don’t smoke.

7. Arterial Motive
For Susan’s exhibition, she created 10 artwork dresses that address issues of women’s heart health. For each piece she uses recycled materials. In this piece she used the small strips that hold belts on to women’s dresses- a lot of them! By using a dissolvable fabric base, she was able to sew all of these little pieces together to make a fabric that she then used to make this dress.

8. Superwoman Syndrome
In Superwoman Syndrome, the front of the garment says “It’s only indigestion. Let me just finish making dinner.” This piece talks about how sometimes we ignore what our body is telling us because we have other responsibilities that we put before our own health. Susan calls this “superwoman syndrome” because sometimes women (and men) think they are invincible like super heroes and don’t slow down to pay attention to their health.
In this piece, Susan uses recycled materials again. The fabric the dress is made out of was actually the fabric bags she used to dye some of the materials used in the rest of the show. She liked the uneven pattern that was created on the fabric, so she turned it into this piece: a hospital gown.

9. Plaque Mystique
In Plaque Mystique, she uses a cape to cover the dress underneath it to show us how under our skin, we could have heart issues and not know it. She tells us the best way to unveil the mystery is to stick to the three ways to promote health: eat well, exercise, and don’t smoke; and get the recommended routine screenings to stay on top of our heart health.

10. How to Make Your Own Red Dress

11. Materials 1 piece of red felt 1 needle 4 straight pins Red thread
Pom poms
Buttons
Beads
Dress pattern (found on our website, or make your own)
Scissors

12. Step 1:
Cut out the dress pattern and pin it to the felt making sure you leave enough room to cut a second one out of the same piece of felt.

13. Step 2:
Carefully cut out the dress. Remove the pattern from the felt dress piece and follow the same steps so you have two red dress felt pieces.

14. Step 3:
Cut off a piece of thread about 2 feet long. Put one end of the thread through the hole in the needle and even up both ends of thread. Tie a knot. (See the next slide for how to make a knot.)
If you can’t master the “booger” knot, any knot will do.

15. How to tie a “booger” knot:1 2 3
Wrap the 2 ends around your pointer finger. Be careful to not to do it too tightly.
Using your finger and your thumb, roll it off like a booger. You may roll it back and forth a few times before going off the edge of your finger. You are trying to get the threads to wind together.
Once it is off, you should have a circle. Use your finger and thumb again to hold the thread above the circle.
Gently pull your fingers down.
As you do this, it will make a knot. 4 5

16. How to tie a end knot:
Make a teeny tiny stitch on the back of the piece picking up only a couple of the fibers.
Pass the needle through the loop of the thread.
Repeat this about 3 times and cut off the extra thread. 1 2

17. Step 4:
Lay out your pom poms, buttons, and beads in the pattern you want. You could also cut pieces out of your scrap fabric to add.
When you start sewing, make
sure you are sewing on only
one of the felt pieces. Set the
other aside for now.

18. Step 5: Sew on the pom poms1 2
Go up from the bottom with the needle where you want the pom pom to go. This way the knot will be on the back.
Go through the middle of the pom pom with the needle and push it all the way down the thread.
Go back down through the felt right next to where you came up.
Pull it tight and continue. 3 4

19. Step 5: Sew on the buttons1 2
Thread the needle up through the felt where you want the button to go. Put one of the holes of the button of the needle and push down the thread.
Put the needle down the second hole of the button and through the felt.
Go back up the first hole from the back to the front.
Go back down the second hole from the front to the back. Tie an end knot on the back. 3 4

20. Step 6: Sew on the beads
Go up through the felt where you want the bead to go and thread the bead onto to the needle.
Go back down right next to where you came up and pull tight. If you are doing many next to each other, you don’t need to tie a knot after each one. Don’t forgot to tie a knot at the end. 1 2
* Beads usually need a special bead needle. If your needle isn’t small enough, try gluing them on instead.

21. Step 7: Pin the dress pieces together
Line up the two pieces of felt with the decorated one on top.
Use your pins to hold the two pieces together.

22. Step 8: Sew the dress pieces together
Make sure you have a long piece of thread on your needle with a knot at the end. Go down only through the bottom piece of thread so the knot will be in between the two pieces. To do a whip stitch, continue to go down for each stitch (instead of up, down, up, down, etc.)
As you keep going, you should see a series of dashed lines on the edge of the dress. Sew all the way around skipping where the head, arms, and legs go. 1 2

23. Final Red Dress

24. Other Resources See more of Susan Taber Avila’s work on her website:
Watch Susan’s artist talk:
Learn more about heart health: