The DEADLINE

Meeting the deadline.
This week we gave in our first project. It felt so good to have given it in and have it finished. I’d finished a couple of days before, so it did feel quite weird not having to do any work in those few days.
I really enjoyed doing my project, and I felt that by the end of it, that I had really developed and progressed with my work.
I think that I found a way in which I like to work. Using a figure and the same material and doing a variation of that material on a figure three times, gave me the most potential ideas.
I really liked working with different materials and manipulating the fabrics in different ways. I think this gave the most realistic idea of what an actually garment would look like.
When it came to working on the stand with my three garments, it was a bit difficult to take ideas from a page and transform them into actual garments. After working for a while I started to create shapes and a silhouette and felt more comfortable with actually making my top.
When I had got the shapes all cut out, I pinned them against the top and made sure that it all fitted together before I started sewing them all together. When I had done this, I stitched around each petal so that there were no raw edges, and then stitched each petal together and then onto the base shirt.
I then started on the back of my garment, plaiting the fabric was the most time consuming, getting the plaits all of the same size and then twisting them in so they were tightly compacted and well stitched down was really difficult. I really wanted to carry on going though, because it did make the garment look really good and gave it a different texture. This was something that my designer did in his work.
I put a large bow on the front, like I had tried previously in my sketchbook and then had curled material falling from the bow, which was also like something that I had tried before with curling ribbon. I really liked my top and if it was to be manufactured I would try in a material that had a lot of lustre and a nice flow and continuity to it. The collar would still be stiffened as this gives a nice contrast.
For the next part of that day we started on our new project with just some questions and some research. We are looking at designing for different markets and fabric properties which are appropriate to these. We had questions to do with different shops and different audiences; this will help us when we actually start with our project.
Also this week I had my jewellery elective again, I really liked what we were doing this week, there were only a few of us in the lesson, so we got through things a lot quicker but also in more detail because we had more one to one tutoring. We used wire and twisted them with a hand drill. This made such an inventive pattern and you could use different tensions to create different effects. This would definitely be something that I would consider to use for my final piece, and it would also fit into the theme of my other work which is something that had to be considered.
On Friday we started the second half of our design realisation module. We had to find an image from a magazine with creative darts and fullness and flair.
We started to create our patterns from the previously made basic bodice block. We adapted the block to create the pattern for our dress.
I felt like I learnt a lot on this day and if I had to adapt a pattern in future I feel that I would be able to do it more independently. I finished my pattern on this day so our group was quite far ahead; I also completed my working drawing so I was really satisfied with what I had done. At home I pinned the pattern to the fabric, so next lesson I can start with the construction.