Developing ideas and Jewellery elective.

This week has been interesting, I only had one full day of college this week, so a lot of the things I have done have been at home. I have worked on my sketchbook, and have now got some more defined ideas for my top that I am going to make.
In our Tuesday session, I had an image that showed a string of flowers and leaves wrapped around an object. I thought I would try and do my own version of this, I used a piece of ribbon, and I had used faux flowers and leaves, I stitched these onto the ribbon, and I thought I would wrap it around the body to create interesting shapes. However where the leaves and shapes where on such a small scale, it made it look more like embellishment rather than something that you could actually use as part of a garment. So to change my idea, I use colour photocopier and place the ribbon of flowers on it and enlarged its size, I then used the shapes created by the flowers to dress a figure. The shapes came away from the body and gave a really interesting and defined silhouette. To take this one step further, I tried to transfer the shapes I had created and cut them out in calico for a full scale figure. The shapes looked good pinned to the manikin, but they needed to be attached to something underneath so that they could move away from the body. This is what I think I will do for my garment. Use the shirt as a base for the shapes, attach them to this and then it will give movement to the top.
I started to unpick my garments and take parts of that I think I will use in my top. I have pinned the neckline so that I can change the shape, I have also added a panel in the front of the shirt so that it can be put over the head rather than being button up.
This week I also started my elective; jewellery. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and it did feel quite weird going into college at half 4. I really enjoyed the session, and it was good to just get stuck in straight away and start making things. We did one process in the night, and learnt how to use different tools and instruments. We used a small sheet of copper, and using a piercing saw, we cut balloons on a string into it. It was really difficult to get used to using the saw, as they were quite flimsy and easily breakable. After a while I had cut my shapes, and also cut the square copper into a circle. We then took another piece of copper, heated it, and then put it into a solution known as ‘pickle’ this softens the copper and makes it bend more easily. Then using a piece of lace we layered the pieces that we had, and it made and indentation and a texture on the surfaces. Then the final stage we used or circular piece of copper and we hammered it and pushed it into a 3d shape, and made it more of a like a half sphere. I’m looking forward to next week, but I think it will be quite strenuous and hard work, but hopefully I will enjoy it.