Year Two Week Eleven

 Week Eleven

This week I added the pleats to my collar and cuffs and sewd these both down. This went well as it meant I know now how much fabric I need to pleat to find the measurements of these perts of the garments. 

I also made my shawl pattern by connecting the front and back bodice together at the shoulders. I then put it on the mannequin and roughly drew the shape I would want this to take. Drawing this on the mannequin was useful as it helped me to see how far over the shoulder I wanted the shawl to be and how far down the front it should be. Once I had done that I made a more confident line whilst it sas flat so l could cut this out. I like the way that this fabric has draped with this and I have a similar thickness fabric from my wedding dress which I think replicate this well. I like how it covers the shoulder of the sleeves but stops before the main design on the sleeve showing the cuff.

For my personal project portfolio page, I shot my tutu. Styling my model to find my moodboard and posing her to show off my tutu but also making it look like a costume as how it could be worn. I am happy with the result of this photoshoot as I made sure to get multiple angles and ballet poses to make my portfolio page diverse. 

I completed my last session of life drawing this week. It was interesting that this week was a female model as it meant I could experiment with this different form and shapes. I also like how we did quick timed drawings and walking as this is something that I wouldn’t usual experiment with. I think this looked interesting on the page as of the way it looks like multiple bodies and different poses. I think this will work well in my portfolio as it is a talking point as is interesting to view as someone who didn’t draw it. 

This week I managed to finish my sustainability page, adding a quote to the page to better explain my concept and adding three initial design ideas from my sketch book but illustrated better to link to my page. 

As my sustainability page didn’t take too long as I had already been working on it, I managed to move on and complete my white shirt page. This went well as the night before I had already planed what I wanted to go in the page and where. With minor tweaking and adding a small pattern to this page I have managed to finish it. I think this page where’s well to show my process as I feature my moodboard, fashion flat, pattern, samples, diary of making and then the photoshoot of the final garment. 

Year Two Week Ten

 Week Ten 

This week in pattern cutting I continued to work on my toile sewing the collar together, I found this shape has worked well to reflect my design but it is slightly not long enough. To make this work I will alter the pattern and make it wider to fit around the whole neck. I’m not sure why it is not wide enough to fit the whole neck but I will measure these both again to work out how much more I need to add. I also continued to unpick the wedding dress, detaching the two skirt layers from the bodice. I found unpicking the lace layer from the bodice to be challenging as it is sewn in many places and the beads on this layer come off easily so some of these have fallen off whilst unpicking. However, these fallen beads do not affect my design and I think the roughened dress will not be affected by these missing as of the style. 

In the textiles lesson this week we worked on portfolio, and I clarified my moodboard for the personal project- tutu that I made. This was useful as it’s helped me to set up the beginning of this page and help to inspire me for the photoshoot I planned for the next Monday. 

I worked on my next page pulling work from my sustainability sketchbook to see what I can use for this page. I decided to pull some of the initial designs and re illustrate them to make them of a higher quality and so they fit into my page better. I decided to cut up my final garment for this page as I havnt done this yet and I felt it will make the page stand out better and to ensure my pages don’t get repetitive. I am finding this page challenging to do as I feel like it has been a bit of a struggle to get the elements of this page to work together and show the journey of me making this garment. 

In photography I shot my white shirt and my garment in the group architecture project. I feel that my white shirt has worked well especially in the photographs. The way I have shot this shirt has made the sleeves stand out and look overly big at the top with volume, the way I wanted it too. I like the way that the netting is coming out of the slit in the top of the leg-of-mutton  as it shows the structural elements. I think the dark great background has also helped to make my shirt stand out as of the contrast against the white. One of the tutors asked another class to guess what the pathway I want to go into is based off of my white shirt and they said costume so this proves my white shirt is working and clear what I want to go into based on the historical side. 

Year Two Week Nine

Week Nine

This week in pattern cutting to develop my shirt, I added the Dorset buttons that I made. I found the process of making Dorset buttons slow at first because I was using thin embroidery thread which took too long to blanket stitch around the ring of the button. After doing this for one ring I decided to switch to embroidery thread as this is bigger so it takes less time to blanket stitch. 

As this was my last session in making this shirt I had to also add the bias binding to my shirt neckline. This slightly twisted when sewing it but as this is covered by the bib this isn’t a big issue. If I had more time I would maybe redo this so it’s flatter. 

This week I completed my patterns for my white on white dress. When making the belt part of this belt I stated by roughly sketching the shape I wanted by putting it against the stand, I then solidified the lines so I was easier to see this. The first draft I thought is more accurate to my sketch but doesn't look exaggerated enough and looks quite plain. I decided to extend the bottom curve deeper and the curves is more fluid and sits better on the mannequin. I also like the shape of this as this pieces sits just under the bust with the high curve and how the bottom goes to the dropped waist making the audience see this as the attention is drawn to it.

To help me physically visualise the height of the collar I want for this design I used a collar I had made for my white shirt project. This then helped me to measure and draft my new pattern by being able to measure how much longer I wanted to make the collar based of this band collar.

As the sleeve block is quite fitted I made sure to open the slashes enough that this would be a comfortable sleeve without being too baggy to replicate the style of dress I am making accurately.

I then started to make my toile, which start simple as all I had to do to start this was sew the darts in the bodice and sew the shoulders and seams together. When sewing the sleeves I made sure to think about all the ways I could sew them to get the best result. I like how the sleeves flow over the cuff as it creates a nice drape and doesn’t go too far over the cuff. 

Year Two Week Eight

 Week Eight 

In the last week during half term, I’d decided to make my personal project as I had interrupted days where I could make this in one go. I decided to make a tutu as this is something I would be interested in learning how to at University if my course allows this. I thought because of this if I create a tutu which I know would need improvement as I was self learning this it would give me a good talking point for the portfolio page. Before stating this project I made sure to research into how to make a tutu through watching videos on multiple platforms and reading into the steps on websites. This was helpful as it helped me to gather different makers opens on how to make it and to find the similarities that they all use, to understand the base steps. When cutting out the fabric I decided to mark a piece of large pattern paper with the measurements to help me get these accurately as I need to cut lots of layers of each measurement. I found gathering the tulle layers of this tutu challenging as when pulling the gathered stitched through they kept on breaking,  this could have been as if the quality of the thread. So I then had to pleat the tulle which was time consuming as there was metres to pleat into the small fabric band.  Once I had sewn each layer top the fabric band from the bottom to the top I put it on the mannequin and inserted the boning hoop into the channel I sewd. I then tacked down the layers in groups of three to eliminate some of the volume making it into more of a pancake tutu.  When pressing it from the bottom up I could see this really taking place as of the layers flattened. I think that overall this has worked well as of the way it doesn’t completely fall and holds some shape and it gives me a starting point on tutus that would be nice to develop in the future. 

In pattern cutting, I made and seed in my sleeves. I was confident in both these sleeves after doing them multiple times. Making sure to pull the elastic tight enough it will fit to the arm but not tight enough that it’s too fitted and uncomfortable. 

In this week I made a portfolio page on textiles, selecting the work I feel flows together and shows off skills. I also like how this shows I can work in a sketchbook.  

I also photographed my colour dress styling it to look 60s as this was my idea behind this dress. I think this was successful as people could tell the idea and the style of hair and poses help to show this.