Week Eleven

Over Easter I had been designing on illustrator and have come up with some good designs which I am really pleased with. I haven’t used illustrator before so I think that I have done well to get the designs looking so professional. I showed the lecturers what I had done over the holidays and asked if they thought it would be possible to make one. I had tried over the holidays using fabric and card to see how it would work but had no luck. The card didn’t bend in the places it needed to and ended up looking old. I haven’t got time to do a lot of experimenting, what I need to end up with needs to be the first thing I try. There are only five weeks left till the deadline and I still have a lot of written work that needs to be done. I sat down with Janet and went through some possible methods that I could use to create the garments. We went through all different types of materials such as foam, card, paper, stiffened fabrics and even what I used to begin with, metals. Foam would be a good material but because I haven’t got time to get to grips with it testing out different ways, I don’t feel confident about using it. I have tried card and it was too think, and creased in the wrong places, paper would be better as it is smoother, and can bend and curve. I don’t want to use metal mesh and wires like my sample, as I am worried that it wouldn’t look good enough. I am not very good at using those types of materials and prefer to use fabrics. I like to do my samples in different things as I like structure and form, but I would find it hard to make a whole collection. I showed Janet some designs that were by Calvin Klein, spring/summer 2009. This collection contained garments, which were structural in shape, but they hadn’t been stiffened to stay the way they were cut. The folds fell down loosely draping. With the talk with Janet I decided this was the way to go. It would be much simpler then having to test out different materials. It is a material I am familiar with, I have my designs, and can come up with something interesting. I went to the fabric shop that afternoon and got some cheep cream fabric to use to mock up a garment. I thought it would be good to pin together a dress, and then use the shapes from this as my pattern when I am using the actual material for the garment. This would save me making mistakes using expensive fabrics. While I was at the fabric shop I also got some samples of fabrics that I could use, and some samples of interfacing so that I could test out what worked for if any sections of the dress needed stiffening. I spent the rest of the week making two garments. I did test ones using cream fabric and then I went back to the fabric shop to get some nicer material, and then used this to make the garments. I stitched the sections that I could, and left one side open, for if I needed to iron any interfacing inside. I would like to have the garments hanging up at the show from the shoulder, so that they fall to create an interesting shape and they create a more sculptural piece rather then a dress on a mannequin.