Sunday, 17 May 2009
CUUUUUUUUBES!
Cubes, cubes and more cubes.
This week we started to sample and make our final pieces, me being me decided to do something long and tedious but I know that It will look good in the end.
I am making a garment out of open faced cubes. The cubes are only 10 by 10 cm so I have had to draw out and cut 76 of them. I have then had to sew a square around the centre to keep the material stable and then over-lock each edge of each square so that they don’t fray and it looks tidy.
This took me ages to do and I was actually sitting at the sewing machine for about 7 hours straight which was pretty frustrating, and the cubes aren’t even sewn together yet.
I’m in the process of doing that now; I am sewing each side together with two rows of stitching, one on the edge of the flap and one down the corner of the cubes, this keep the cubes structure and also stops the loose pieces of fabric from flapping about.
Whilst I was pinning some of the cubes together last week and placing them on the manikin to get the shape of the smock dress that I want to create, I realised that it was looking a little bland and that even though the cubes gave surface texture that It was lacking colour and depth.
I was talking to the tutors and have come up with the idea of spray painting the garment once it is constructed together. I looked back through my research to pick out some colours and themes that I could possibly use as a top layer to my garment.
I have now picked out the idea of merging colours and the colour spectrum, I did a piece using inks that ran together to create different colours so I’m hoping to use this idea, but with stronger lines and angles, so it fits with the strong structure of my piece. I am going to protect some of the piece so it is not touched by the spray paint, and the build up the layers of paint to create contrast and light and dark areas.
I’m hoping that once I have done this my piece will be more I wanted it to be in the first place. I have to finish sewing the cubes together by Tuesday so that I can start attaching the cubes to the cubes to create the smock dress. I’ve really enjoyed doing this project and I hope that my final piece reflects the amount of hard work that I have put into it.
This week I have also started work on my PPD1 presentation and choosing my 15 best pieces of work. It has been quite tough to go through everything and chose which is the best, because there are pieces that I like more than others but aren’t necessarily the best, so I have started to whittle down the pieces and will hopefully have decided by the end of this week. I have started to cover my DVD case and it looks really good, I have stuck to a theme which seems to work the best, so hopefully that will give me a good mark.
The presentation has been quite hard, I know what I want to say in the presentation, it’s just the images that I need to use that I’m finding difficult, which is strange because it’s usually the other way around. I’m going to do some more work on the presentation this week and start picking out things that could work. So hopefully that will be finished soon and I can start rehearsing it so I sound confident when it actually comes to doing it.
It was the third week with the third years this week, and was pretty much just doing the standard things again, unpicking, patterns, hand sewing. However this week they were having crits of some of their outfits so it was good to see some of the collections put together, and that was really inspiring as I got to see such good shapes and so many different styles and themes.
Their hand in date is next Friday so I can imagine that this week’s session is going to be pretty mad with everyone trying to get everything finished, so that should be interesting, but hopefully everything will be done and it will just be little things that I have to do.
This week we started to sample and make our final pieces, me being me decided to do something long and tedious but I know that It will look good in the end.
I am making a garment out of open faced cubes. The cubes are only 10 by 10 cm so I have had to draw out and cut 76 of them. I have then had to sew a square around the centre to keep the material stable and then over-lock each edge of each square so that they don’t fray and it looks tidy.
This took me ages to do and I was actually sitting at the sewing machine for about 7 hours straight which was pretty frustrating, and the cubes aren’t even sewn together yet.
I’m in the process of doing that now; I am sewing each side together with two rows of stitching, one on the edge of the flap and one down the corner of the cubes, this keep the cubes structure and also stops the loose pieces of fabric from flapping about.
Whilst I was pinning some of the cubes together last week and placing them on the manikin to get the shape of the smock dress that I want to create, I realised that it was looking a little bland and that even though the cubes gave surface texture that It was lacking colour and depth.
I was talking to the tutors and have come up with the idea of spray painting the garment once it is constructed together. I looked back through my research to pick out some colours and themes that I could possibly use as a top layer to my garment.
I have now picked out the idea of merging colours and the colour spectrum, I did a piece using inks that ran together to create different colours so I’m hoping to use this idea, but with stronger lines and angles, so it fits with the strong structure of my piece. I am going to protect some of the piece so it is not touched by the spray paint, and the build up the layers of paint to create contrast and light and dark areas.
I’m hoping that once I have done this my piece will be more I wanted it to be in the first place. I have to finish sewing the cubes together by Tuesday so that I can start attaching the cubes to the cubes to create the smock dress. I’ve really enjoyed doing this project and I hope that my final piece reflects the amount of hard work that I have put into it.
This week I have also started work on my PPD1 presentation and choosing my 15 best pieces of work. It has been quite tough to go through everything and chose which is the best, because there are pieces that I like more than others but aren’t necessarily the best, so I have started to whittle down the pieces and will hopefully have decided by the end of this week. I have started to cover my DVD case and it looks really good, I have stuck to a theme which seems to work the best, so hopefully that will give me a good mark.
The presentation has been quite hard, I know what I want to say in the presentation, it’s just the images that I need to use that I’m finding difficult, which is strange because it’s usually the other way around. I’m going to do some more work on the presentation this week and start picking out things that could work. So hopefully that will be finished soon and I can start rehearsing it so I sound confident when it actually comes to doing it.
It was the third week with the third years this week, and was pretty much just doing the standard things again, unpicking, patterns, hand sewing. However this week they were having crits of some of their outfits so it was good to see some of the collections put together, and that was really inspiring as I got to see such good shapes and so many different styles and themes.
Their hand in date is next Friday so I can imagine that this week’s session is going to be pretty mad with everyone trying to get everything finished, so that should be interesting, but hopefully everything will be done and it will just be little things that I have to do.
Friday, 8 May 2009
Moulage workshop - part 1
Moulage
This week we also had a workshop on the pattern cutting technique of moulage. Moulage is working directly on the stand with a large piece of material and manipulating and marking the material in a manner to create shape and structure.
We had to moulage the garment that we had created in the workshop before hand, so mine was the cube skirt. Unfortunately this was not possible for me to do because of the way my cubes had to be constructed, it was not physically possible. So I was just working off the top of my head in this session, but it was very interesting to see how it worked and it is a very clever technique especially if you want to design intricate garments, and design features.
We have only made our garment on the stand so far, for the next session we will learn how to create the flat pattern from what we have already created.
When using the moulage technique you have to remember to mark the centre front and back, and also the side and shoulder seams, so you know where the garment has to be put together. You also have to leave the seam allowance, so when the garment is made from the flat pattern it can be attached together correctly.
Moulage does not work for trousers or for creating sleeves. I think this technique is a useful one to know and when I am designing in my second or third year I will probably try to adopt this technique.
Design development - Metamorphosis
Taking my ideas further.
This week we were again working on our metamorphosis project. We have started with our design development and started to pick out our strongest ideas to take further and then finally choose one of those to create as our final piece.
I think that the task we were set this week helped me really to progress with my ideas and also in getting something completed in the allotted time. We were asked to use a half scale manikin and create a sustainable garment using our ideas. We Had five hours to create this piece, it would then be photographed and handed in.
When we started to do this I had to think of something that was going to actually take that long to do, where I had been working with cubes, it is quite simple to create the shapes, and as one of my ideas was just to put one cube inside the other to create a skirt it would not have taken me the entire time, so I decided to stick with the same theme but opt for a different output. I made very small cubes, and sewed them together individually to create a diamond cross effect. I think this worked really well and gave an interesting surface pattern but it was also the way that the garment was constructed so that was even better.
I was really pleased that I finished my garment on time and in the end I was really pleased with this. I have now thought about taking this forward to my final idea.
I would like to use a material that I created in the fabric workshop for part of my garment, and then use white material for the other part, so it gives a good contrast and it is not too much of one of the other.
I am going into town today to buy some fabrics and see which will sustain the cube shape the best as I want it to be quite rigid so that the shapes are exact and accurate. I will then sample some ideas later and then decide fully on my final design and then I can start creating my garment in our next sessions.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Third year PA
Working with the third years
This week I have been appointed to a third year, as pretty much there PA, for the next five weeks to work with them every Thursday. They are in the stages of creating their final collections and we have to assist in which ever ways that they need us.
We are only allowed to assist with certain things, such as sourcing threads and fabrics, mounting, pattern cutting, hand sewing, labels, business cards, touching up and general other things.
I think this experience will actually be really helpful, as I get to see how the third years work and what will be expected of us at the level. It is good to look through their sketchbook work and see how different people work.
The tasks that I had to undertake on Thursday included going to town to obtain thread and buttons, doing some research into business cards, and then doing some hand stitching to finish the edge of one of her garments. Lucy (my third year) had to complete the next part of her garment before there was anything that I could help her with, so I got to leave early, so hopefully next week I will be able to assist more and then I will be able to ask her some more questions about her work/ fabrics and where he drew her inspiration from.
It was quite strange as one of her concept s was using 3d shapes but using very soft light fabrics to create them, which is similar to what I have just started to do in my metamorphosis project.
I think that this will be a very valuable experience, and I hope to learn from it so It will help me with my future work and also inspire me for future projects.
This week I have been appointed to a third year, as pretty much there PA, for the next five weeks to work with them every Thursday. They are in the stages of creating their final collections and we have to assist in which ever ways that they need us.
We are only allowed to assist with certain things, such as sourcing threads and fabrics, mounting, pattern cutting, hand sewing, labels, business cards, touching up and general other things.
I think this experience will actually be really helpful, as I get to see how the third years work and what will be expected of us at the level. It is good to look through their sketchbook work and see how different people work.
The tasks that I had to undertake on Thursday included going to town to obtain thread and buttons, doing some research into business cards, and then doing some hand stitching to finish the edge of one of her garments. Lucy (my third year) had to complete the next part of her garment before there was anything that I could help her with, so I got to leave early, so hopefully next week I will be able to assist more and then I will be able to ask her some more questions about her work/ fabrics and where he drew her inspiration from.
It was quite strange as one of her concept s was using 3d shapes but using very soft light fabrics to create them, which is similar to what I have just started to do in my metamorphosis project.
I think that this will be a very valuable experience, and I hope to learn from it so It will help me with my future work and also inspire me for future projects.
First week back...
Metamorphosis
The first week back to college has been a real eye opener, we are preparing for our second year now and we are starting to be pushed and worked in the way that we will next year.
I think I will like the way that we work in the second year, our tutors sais there will be one days workshops where there will be tasks set and that you have to complete them by a certain time in that day. I like to work like this because I feel that I have to push myself to get the entire task requirements met and this makes me produce work at a faster pace and I feel that I do have better ideas and development working like this.
We are still working on our metamorphosis project, I have found this project particularly challenging, especially the research because I didn’t know if what I was doing was correct and what I should be aiming for. Coming back to college and looking through everyone’s work I do feel a bit more confident with what I have done and now I am moving onto ideas sheets and design development I think I have got some really good stuff out of it. I have started using the idea of strong 3D shapes, such as cubes and cones, I like this because strong structured shapes are not commonly seen in garments and I think this would make a bold statement. I chose to do this because I felt that these were the shapes that were sticking out in my research and they would be the one of the strongest ideas for me to develop. I have started to experiment and sample with these and I now want to take this further to create these from different materials, like some of the stuff that I produced in the fabric manipulation workshop.
When I started producing the samples for the cubes, it was during a workshop day where we had been set the task to complete five samples inspired from our research and five research sheets showing how we could use these samples to create a silhouette. I spent such a long time on my samples that day because they were quite hard to construct, and where I was making them on a large scale I had to make sure that they were accurate so that the cubes would fit together, also I had to remember that I needed to add extra material around the edges so that I could fix them together. This at first I had forgot about so had to start again quite a few times until I got it right.
I also pulled out the shape of the swan from my research as it was such an interesting shape and I had quite a few photos of different angles and positions that I could work with. I tried some samples of this but I would like to develop this a bit further because I think there is something really exciting within this.
The other shapes that I looked at where ones from the power station, again these were very strong bold shapes and I found that I could do some interesting things to the surface of the material and It created some interesting silhouette shapes, but I think that my other two ideas are stronger so I am going to continue developing them and then choose which I think will work best and make the biggest statement.
The first week back to college has been a real eye opener, we are preparing for our second year now and we are starting to be pushed and worked in the way that we will next year.
I think I will like the way that we work in the second year, our tutors sais there will be one days workshops where there will be tasks set and that you have to complete them by a certain time in that day. I like to work like this because I feel that I have to push myself to get the entire task requirements met and this makes me produce work at a faster pace and I feel that I do have better ideas and development working like this.
We are still working on our metamorphosis project, I have found this project particularly challenging, especially the research because I didn’t know if what I was doing was correct and what I should be aiming for. Coming back to college and looking through everyone’s work I do feel a bit more confident with what I have done and now I am moving onto ideas sheets and design development I think I have got some really good stuff out of it. I have started using the idea of strong 3D shapes, such as cubes and cones, I like this because strong structured shapes are not commonly seen in garments and I think this would make a bold statement. I chose to do this because I felt that these were the shapes that were sticking out in my research and they would be the one of the strongest ideas for me to develop. I have started to experiment and sample with these and I now want to take this further to create these from different materials, like some of the stuff that I produced in the fabric manipulation workshop.
When I started producing the samples for the cubes, it was during a workshop day where we had been set the task to complete five samples inspired from our research and five research sheets showing how we could use these samples to create a silhouette. I spent such a long time on my samples that day because they were quite hard to construct, and where I was making them on a large scale I had to make sure that they were accurate so that the cubes would fit together, also I had to remember that I needed to add extra material around the edges so that I could fix them together. This at first I had forgot about so had to start again quite a few times until I got it right.
I also pulled out the shape of the swan from my research as it was such an interesting shape and I had quite a few photos of different angles and positions that I could work with. I tried some samples of this but I would like to develop this a bit further because I think there is something really exciting within this.
The other shapes that I looked at where ones from the power station, again these were very strong bold shapes and I found that I could do some interesting things to the surface of the material and It created some interesting silhouette shapes, but I think that my other two ideas are stronger so I am going to continue developing them and then choose which I think will work best and make the biggest statement.
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