week 16 (13/1/25) - (19/1/25)

Monday was the beginning of our pattern cutting for our bodices. I was a little bit unsure where to start at first, but I was able to quickly get to it after I asked Lareen a few questions about how to start. I wanted to make the bodice shorter, so I used a measuring tape to find roughly where I wanted it to reach, though I had troubles with making it fit right. Later I used a mannequin and decided that the length was a bit long for what I wanted to create to I shortened it by a small amount. I was a little confused when it came to how I would close the dart and create a panel, but I just slashed the pattern in half to fix this since the bottom part would be a panel by itself anyways.

During my study period, I worked on my blog for last week because I know my digital presence has been a bit lacklustre in this department, especially with the lack of photos.

With Calvin, I was able to take my Kandinsky inspired photos which I think turned out good because I thought about how different shapes worked with the background and how they can work with each other along with how I could use the camera to create unique perspectives.

In stretch, I worked on finishing the questions that I was asked for my new project as preliminary research. I then narrowed my selection down to three topics: clean water and sanitation, quality education and responsible production and consumption. For these three topics, I gathered different photos that represent them and printed them off to create vision boards from them. I found this simple enough to do but I had quite a few pictures to cut out so most of my time was spent doing that instead of anything else.

 

With Sam we did patchwork/applique with decorative stitches. I wanted to aim to do patchwork, but I ended doing a bit of a combination of the two in the end due to the circles that I stacked on top of each other. All the other pieces are cut carefully so they fit together. I was able to complete one piece with machine and started one by hand, my aim is to use different colours to create contrasted and complementary areas.

Charlie's lesson was again a lesson for us to use to do work in different parts of our project. I chose to use this time to continue to develop my pattern for Lareen's bodice. I feel like I didn't get much done but I think it was more due to my confusion at some parts of the pattern.

On Wednesday’s lesson, I started on creating the 'tassels' that will hang off the bottom of the top. I did this by measuring out the bodice equally and marking them on a separate piece of pattern paper so I could keep them even and have a better understanding of how far apart they need to be and how thick they can be. I also began my back pattern piece that I decided to make whole instead of putting an 'on the fold' sign because I want the holes on the yoke of the top to be asymmetrical. These processes weren't too difficult because the 'tassels' were just rectangles, so I only needed to measure out different lengths for each of them and I didn't get much done with the back during the lesson other than starting on the yoke.

When I was in Tutorials, I finally started on my action plan which is a bit bothersome because I should have really started the action plan as soon as I began the project, even if it wasn't much, building the action plan as I got a clearer understanding of the pace of this project. I think I need to be more on pace with this part of my time at college because it can really help me understand where I need to be and when I should be getting things done.

At home I managed to finish off all the different pattern pieces of my top for Lareen which means I can move on to the toile and figuring out how to do some of the things that I found more confusing. While this was quite a time-consuming task, I felt that I was going at a good pace, managing not to get confused by much of anything. I also created design ideas for the opening night garment that I will be doing for Sam. I had a bit of a hard time trying to figure out different ways I could incorporate the painting into the design, so I think a lot of my designs are very similar and there isn't a lot of variation in my considerations of what to do.

When it came to Friday, I didn't have a final design so I spent the first part of the lesson creating one using all the different ideas I had when I was creating initial designs and taking the design aspects that I think worked best with what I wanted to do so I could create an effective design but I might change it slightly if I find that I don't like how the toile works out. For the rest of the lesson, I spent my time creating samples of the different techniques that I was considering using for my final garment to see how they would work and if they would work.

When at home I cut out all the pattern pieces for my toile (Lareen) and I found that I had quite a lot of pattern pieces for this product which means I will have a lot of seams and connecting pieces. I think this is good because it means I have a design that is easy to construct but with a lot of interconnecting pieces that will make the top interesting to look at, not only due to the different colour blocking but also due to the different seams.

On Saturday I started to construct my toile for Lareen, completing the easy parts (which is a large majority of the design) and leaving the yoke part (the hardest) to be completed on Monday when I can ask Lareen for some guidance on how it will work. This allows me to make some progress and focus on asking Lareen questions when I need to, instead of spending my lesson doing the easy parts and then finding out that I'm struggling after I get home and can't ask anymore. I then started on my pattern for Sam's garment which wasn't too hard since there wasn't much difference between the normal pattern blocks and the design I was going for (though I might change it a little bit/ add an interesting aspect to make it unique in some way). 

My pattern cutting continued Sunday and took me a while because I had to elongate the skirt of my design by a good amount.