Half Term break.

May half term.

Over the start of the break, I looked around Plymouth Arts University. I really enjoyed the Campus and it felt welcoming with lots of spacious rooms and linking buildings. As this wasn't an open day but an open tour event I didn't learn a lot about the course but I did see a few costumes that students had made an found them very inspiring. This was a student guided tour so it was nice to hear about her perspective and experiences and how they are more than welcome to try different subject and techniques than hat they do as a degree, they are even encouraged with weeks where you try about different areas of creative arts. I was pleasantly surprised with the Plymouth area as well as I have never been but I found the Marina and the Docks a nice place to be. Unfortunately the costume graduation show wasn't full out but I did see the textiles show which looked great and a few fashion garments where displayed in the hallways which where nice too see. 

I also visited the Falmouth open day the next day which I learnt a lot about the course and what they offer. I found it interesting how they focus on the design and making this into costumes. For example, instead of manly making the outfits, lots narrow down on the buying of clothes and then adapting or distressing it to make it suit their design and character. I was surprised by the grounds of this campus as there are large gardens and an old house which I learnt is used a lot as the backgrounds of photoshoots of film. In this course you also work a lot with other students, like film you would help supply the costumes. They also have a very large costume store that gets used for films or television. When visiting I also had a look at their textiles grad show which looked very interesting. 

In half term I made most of my designed garment for the group architecture. I started with making the pleats which went well but was slightly more challenging than the toile as I couldn't draw the fold line the whole way down as I didn't want to stain the white cotton fabric. Sewing this into the trousers went well as I was confident in the angle and how to arrange the pleats so that they create a curved shape which start going in and out from the seam. This time the trousers came together with no problems as I now knew how to sew the pieces together to get the trouser legs facing the right side up. 

When sewing the waistband, I firstly sewed across the waist but I wasn't happy with the result as the line wasn't neat or straight and the side seams created bulk. To fix this I decided to cut the fabric to create a straight line so all of the fabric was the same height. As one of the seam seams was higher than the other, doing this meant they where evened out and the bulk was smaller and less noticeable. As I cut the fabric the amount of extra fabric that we left to fold over was reducing this meant that I couldn't fold this as many times but it was still enough to fold the fabric under making it neater. This also meant that the elastic was slightly too big so I trimmed some of the top and then it fit, this didn't affect the elasticity so this wasn't a problem. I added bias binding to the hem of the trousers which was challenging as the front and the back meet at a point because of the asymmetrical curve. 

When sewing the top together I didn't come across many problems. However, where the thread is held at the top of the machine it would sometimes wrap around that metal stick and causing less thread to go through the machine so the tension was affected, making the fabric bunch up. At some points it was necessary for me to re-sew this so I had to unpick parts of this and re-sew them so the fabric wasn't tight. I think the piping I the seam of the top has turned out well because the zip foot managed to get very close to the piping itself. I think it also looks sleek in the seam as I firstly pinned it the one side of the top and then pinned the seam together entirely so that the piping is securely in the right place bending correctly around the curve of the top. 

To attach the hood and the collar to the zip I sewed them together first. This worked well as it meant they wouldn't move apart when I attach the zip, attaching the zip was simple as all I had to do was simple sew a line near the zip teeth. 

Once I sewed the zip on I thought that the collar and hood fabric went past the zip a bit too much making it look messy and occasionally get caught in the zip teeth. To amend this I decided to trim the fabric down so it wouldn't been seen with the intention of seam neatening again after. This was a problem though as the fabric that was left over was too thin for the machine foot to sit on and sew along, I decided to try different feet for example also a zip foot which still didn't work. As you can't see this it isn't much of an issue but next time I would think about this is advance so this is neat and looks good. As the fabric is shorter it sometimes still catches in the zip but much less and only in certain points.  

In the Half term I also started a new way of writing diary of makings, I started to do the digitally. I arranged the photos and scanned a photo of the brown paper that I use in my sketchbook to be the background of my writing. I think this has worked well as it's a similar format to my book and when scanning the brown paper it has come up a bit lighter which has made the writing on top of it easy to read.