week 17 (20/1/25) - (26/1/25)

 Monday was my chance to ask Lareen for guidance on how to do my yoke and I found it very helpful. I was able to understand how I needed to manipulate and pull the fabric to create different effects and seams which I will take on with me in the future for any similar design that need this type of construction. The rest of the construction was nice and easy because it only required sewing some simple seams and bagging out the yoke with the burrito method. The very las thing I did for the toile was sew a facing and two of the 'tassels' from my design because I needed to test them out someway and this was the perfect opportunity to test it out. One thing I noticed was that I needed to make the 'tassels' seam allowance longer on one side to allow for the 1.5cm seam allowance everywhere else on the design. Another thing was that the facing was too long because I had accidentally added seam allowance where I didn't need it on one of the patterns. I also experimented with under stitching to keep the facing neat and hidden but found that I needed to do a row of top stitching to keep it up. I then put the toile on a mannequin to test out how it would look when it is finished, and I think it looks good and successfully translates my design that I had decided on for my final piece. During the rest of the lesson, I spent my time shortening my zip for my bodice which was quite challenging because I had to rip the teeth out with pliers and I'm not that strong. I also tried to repurpose the zip topper stops but I was unable to so I will have to buy some new ones.

     

During my free study period, I decided to finally try out different colour combinations that I will use for my final piece, experimenting with different placement of colours and different amounts of colour for the different colour. But overall, I decided to pick one with a large amount of orange, like the painting has.

 

In photography we were told to do some research on artists that represent themselves through things that they are not along with taking horizontal pictures which I didn't manage to do so I will do them at home. I can't comment on much that I did during this lesson, but I didn't get a lot done. I did find it interesting when researching the different artists, interesting things about their lives.

 

At home I was able to cut out my toile pieces for Sam ready for Tuesday.

In stretch I was told to continue my visual mood boards which I did after I stuck down all my research that I had done the weeks before. I managed to get most of it done with only one mood board left to stick down with a planned placement, so it won't take me long. This lesson didn't teach me, but I still learnt and confirmed that things take longer than they seem they will take.

 

With Sam, I decided that first I should do some samples using the fabric paint that I had just brought so I could see if there were any differences or setbacks before I put the paint on my final piece. This helped me understand the medium more and know how I can paint it more effectively. I then decided that for my toile I won't do any textile methods, but I would draw out the design that I wish to create so that I can see if it works or if it needs to be tweaked so that it works better with the design. I did this with tailor’s chalk.

With Charlie, we started to learn how to use InDesign. I found this a bit complex to understand at the beginning because i am new to the program but I was able to catch on well enough so that I would be able to use it with a bit more practice.

 

 

When I got home, I worked on a bit of book work for Lareen along with cutting out most of my pattern pieces.

 

Wednesday was a short lesson with Lareen so I couldn’t do much except cut out the remaining pattern pieces (bar two) and overlocked the patterns for the tassels. I feel like I need to get on with my work a bit faster because the deadline is coming up.

 

When I got home on Wednesday, I overlocked all the remaining pieces that I hadn’t gotten to do during the lesson with black thread and began on the creation of my bodice connecting all the front pattern pieces together and under pressing when needed. I found this simple to do but there were important things that I needed to be careful of when doing this including making sure the panels were put in correctly and when connecting the top and bottom sections, making sure the panels were in line with each other. One of the trickier things I did was connecting the yoke patterns together and cutting it so when turned out, it would look like a proper circle. I messed up on one and had to re-cut and re-sew the entire thing again, luckily having just enough fabric to do so.

I continued this on Thursday, sewing the yoke to the back of the bodice and using the burrito method to finish bagging it out. I couldn't do a full bag out because the circles in the pattern meant that I couldn't separate the two yoke pieces enough to sew to correct way that would lead to a seamless yoke on the inside. Using the burrito method was extremely hard for this bodice because of all the bulk that prevented me from getting clean lines with the sewing machines, i prevented this by being very careful and going over lines so that I could get it as good as possible.

 

On Friday I finished my patterns on my toile for Sam and connected all the pieces together to finish the bodice of my toile before I was able to go home and continue later. (though I didn't go home straight away and so I lost a couple of hours for work). Even so, I managed to finish my toile at home either way. Later, I patterned out my final piece onto some plain white fabric and marked all the darts where I needed them.

This took me quite a while because it was difficult to mark out and keep the fabric flat on the floor due to my lack of floor space along with the fabric being very large. I managed to get everything cut out and drawn on by the end of the weekend. One problem I do admit to because I am bothered by it myself is that I had a really hard time doing anything over the weekend, even jest getting up so I lost a lot of valuable time that could have gone into other things. I really need to improve this.