A Philly artist has designed a uniform for toddler moms. It’s a space suit.

In 2016, artist Aimee Koran — who had recently given birth to her first child, a daughter — accidentally spilled breast milk in her studio while pumping.

Dismayed by the accident, she went to throw away the sheet of transparent mylar film where the milk had spilled only to notice the abstract image the dried milk created. It was beautiful, almost ethereal, and somehow otherworldly. That’s how Koran’s series of images titled Milkscapes came into being.

Koran, now a single mother to 6- and 10-year olds, explained that Milkscapes was “made by pouring a small amount of my breast milk onto a sheet of glass.” The milk dries in abstract shapes, “highlighting an otherwise invisible labor.” The glass is then photographed and printed to billboard scale.

» READ MORE: This Philadelphia artist is turning spilt breastmilk into art

An intimate, yet highly labored and nuanced routine transforms into a blown-out and large object that draws attention — “suggesting how personal space becomes blurred or even nonexistent as a mother.”

A Milkscapes pattern has now made its way to a more recent project called MSS.

“What would a uniform for mothers look like?” Koran asked herself at the genesis of MSS. “So that’s how thinking around the MSS suit started, which eventually evolved into this astronaut training/boiler suit.”

MSS stands for Mama’s Space Suit and is at once funny and deeply striking. It’s a boiler suit made specifically for the mother of a young infant.

Koran’s details are hyper-specific and tied to NASA uniform imagery. A breast pocket — it drops down to allow for breastfeeding — is embroidered with the acronym “MILF,” standing for “Mothers In the Labor Force.” (Koran’s way of reclaiming the misogynist term.)

A patch that would normally say NASA, says MAMA, and Koran styled the traditional American flag patch using ovulation kit strips. There’s a pacifier attached to one hip with a pull cord, and on the other hip, a box of tissues sits at the ready; there’s a baby carrier adorning the suit’s back.

Milkscapes patterns adorn the suit, which is tailored to Koran’s body, making MSS deeply personal.

“As an artist, I’m constantly inspired by my own body, and am always thinking about it in terms of mark-making [literally and figuratively], the mark we leave on this Earth in all its forms,” Koran said.

Draped on a mannequin, MSS is part of the Soft/Cover exhibition at the Fabric Workshop and Museum through Aug. 17.

MSS is a multigenerational story for Koran. The artist, who currently lives in her grandmother’s Fairmount house with her children, said this work is an ode to her grandmother, who was part of the Philadelphia textile workers union.

“Being both a mother and a maker is significant to my living heritage and profoundly informs my practice. My grandmothers spent the earlier parts of their lives working in textile factories here in Philadelphia, so I am continuously inspired by my lineage of makers who were also mothers,” Koran said.

She finds comfort in the term women’s work, which has “historically been devalued in both craft and content.” The term, she said, has often been “employed to depreciate the significance or social value of such work, so I’m really interested in questioning and redefining those themes.”

MSS and Milkscapes fit into a larger pattern of Koran’s redefining the word labor with respect to motherhood.

For her series “Tested,” Koran creates shapes using ovulation test strips (which then form the basis for a patch in MSS), and in “Chromed Life,” she casts objects like rattles and baby bottles in chrome. (Prints from “Chromed Life” are available at the museum’s shop as is the MILF patch from MSS.)

Similarly, “Self-Preservation” features baby objects like teddy bears and tiny hats encased in rubber. “Insiders,” a part of which is also on view at the museum’s window display and shop, turns stuffed animals inside-out so that they’re “a ghost of their former existence.”

During a presentation at the museum alongside fellow artists Mildred Beltré Martinez and Julia Chiang — both of whom also have work on display in Soft/Cover — Koran said that while she worked on Milkscapes at the University of Pennsylvania (where she earned a master’s in fine arts), she was told that the project was too niche and not universal enough. Yet it’s something every mother on this planet has experienced.

“Motherhood and the culture of the care economy is now more visible than ever, and yet little positive structural change has occurred,” Koran said of her work’s enduring relevance.

“And,” she added, “mothers are losing access to resources and basic human rights almost daily,” referencing the many political battles over both childbirth and women’s bodily autonomy.

“I thus see the significance of my work not only artistically but perhaps more importantly socially and politically.”

“Soft/Cover” is on exhibition through Aug. 17 at the Fabric Museum and Workshop, 1214 Arch St., Phila. fabricworkshopandmuseum.org. Free.