First thread

I've been working on my first thread for the theme seven deadly sins, all a thread is basically a chain of your thoughts from your starting point. For mine I started with the sin 'envy' and my thought of envy was devils and revenge so I found a image of a statue of a devil and started from there, going onto a primary drawing of a goblin then onto looking at the shapes of areas of my drawing, my thoughts from that was Sherpa horns and there texture and shapes which then led onto shape development on the body with Sheep horns, my next step I was thinking would be onto snakes as the shape of the twisted Sheeps horns.

Playing around with manipulating fabric

As part of another workshop called manipulating fabric, which basically means changing how fabric looks, so for part of this i used the 'all sides gathered' technique which is when you just fold all the fabric up in different places and stitch areas of it down onto a separate piece of fabric. however for my experiment i just folded the middle section of the material and stitched this down and left the sides of the fabric loose giving it this kind of flower look. I then just thought 'lets see how it would look on the body' and this is what i did, by placing my experiment on different areas of a manikin i could see where it looked best on the body. 

Knitting workshop

The knitting workshop actually turned out to be quite relaxing after while, even though I did know how to knit before the workshop so it didn't make it that difficult for me, after a little sample in wool I moved onto knitting wire (wow that was hard) I managed it though and it turned out quite a success. My next challenge is knitting with tied together piece of fabric and tissue paper. Ill upload a photo of this once i have managed it, however heres my wire knitting.

Maybe I lied...

Okay I may of lied on my last post about it being my last one today but I couldn't help myself, I just wanted to share my progress in the lace workshop! So basically what I have done is drawn my observational drawing across two pages in my sketchbook and my plan is to recreate areas of the drawing using lace in some areas to be pit over the top of my drawing, I have started in some areas but still waiting for some lace to dry from creating it earlier but this is it so far... (Sorry for lying)

I can't stop blogging today!

I promise this is my last blog today. I just had to many things to talk about after my busy weekend in manchester! But one last thing ! I am in love with these TOPSHOP Alexa Chelsea boots, they are so simple but so nice and would go perfectly with my low for black jeans and jumpers, I guess I'll just have to save up for them... to much love for topshop

Instagram

Many of the photos I take related to me and mainly fashion are posted on my Instagram page JENBEARDXX (the one with the Christmas pudding hat on)

Spare time

I don't have much spare time on this as goon course as I alway have to be on my feet doing something to help me be independent! But in the Christmas holidays I had a spare few hours and I started to experiment with my inks and water creating patterns and shapes on a plate with different colours and blowing the inks with a straw! I found it really exciting as I didn't know what was going to happen but here are a few of the outcomes...

Update on pattern cutting

After I had planned and created my template for my 60s dress I was finally ready to cut out the material and that is exactly what I did! I was so nervous incase I cut it wrong but I managed it! I started off by folding my material in half! SELVEDGE TO SELVEDGE! ( my way of remembering it) with the right side on the inside and placing all my pattern piece in the correct place with all the on the fold pieces on the fold and the rest with the grain line parallel to the fold. Making sure I saved as much material as I could! I left the sleeve and the pockets out as I cut these out on a separate coloured material.

Crazy embroidery!

I was searching across my tumblr blog and came across this amazing photo of an embroidered piece of work and it blew me away, I was sat in my room starring at it for age thinking how on earth has some created this! It is brilliant!

Work shops

Out off all of the workshops we have done in class my favourite so far was the printing, I choose an area of a models jacket on the front cover of ID magazine and carved it into a potato, Lino board and traced around it for a Monay print. This image was an area of my potato printing that I have edited and used on my Instagram page.

Textile Designer

I was researching into different textile designers when my eldest sister mentioned to me about someone she had worked with at her previous work who had her own printing business with her mum and supplied a lot over seas. So I went of a researched into 'Rianna- Phillips' ( the name of the girl she had worked with) and came across her website - http://www.riannaphillips.com/. I straight away loved her work and found the patterns and colours she had used interesting and on trend, she mainly prints onto accessories such as bags, purses and scarfs. I also found myself wanting to buy one of her designs myself.

The start of pattern cutting...

A couple of weeks ago in class we started on what I though would be the dreaded pattern cutting, but I was soon mistaken! It wasn't as hard as it looked! Surprisingly I found it quite straight forward. This is how I did it...
Firstly, I traced round the front and back dress block (size12) with the breast dart onto pattern cutting paper.

Secondly, once I had traced around the block, I had to decide where I wanted the pleats on the dress to begin, for example the  hip line or below. I choose to start the pleats from the hip line, there fore I crossed out anything below the hip line so It would help me know what I needed to cut out. 

After that I had to change the style of the dress from it being slightly fitted to not being fitted at all (shift dress). To do this, I drew a straight line from the arm hole to the hip line joining them both together and crossing out the previous line, this is how I changed it from a fitted dress to a non fitted dress. 

As part of the design of the dress it included two front pockets. To create these pockets I had to choose any size that I wanted and draw a squared shape onto the front dress template and curve the bottom two corners so it create a more pockets shape.

I then moved onto working with the back template by shortening the template to the same hip line as the front template, were I had chosen to start my pleats from.

Then the hard bit came along... moving the breast dart on the front dress template to an under the arm hole dart. It sounded difficult but actually turned out quite straight forward! I started my drawing a line from the same point of the bottom of the breast dart to anywhere underneath the arm hole and cutting up this line to create a slit in the template, I then started to close the old dart by folded it over on the line so it created a flap and taped this down, this then opened up the new dart under the arm hole. This is how I managed to move a dart. At this stage I also added in the pleat lines from the hip line by drawing three straight lines 1.5cm apart from each other and making sure they weren't to close to the center fold line. 

The next step of creating the dress template was adjusting the neck line. I did this by measuring a certain amount across from the original neck line on the shoulder seam and the same on fold on the cut line  and joining them up with the same distance from the original neck line all the way round and crossed out the previous neck line.

I then did the same for the neck line on the back template, this time I had to cross the back shoulder dart out  and making sure the measurements from the front neck line on the shoulder seam were the same distance as the back neck line on the shoulder seam, there for when the neck lines were placed together at the shoulders they matched correctly.

Finally for this part of the dress templates all I had to do is trace around the front and back templates and pocket to create a final template, making sure all the measurements were correct,

The next step was the dreaded pleats! and I mean dreaded, I found this part the most stressful part of it all, it was so confusing and really got my brain working but I managed it, and this is how I did it..

I firstly grabbed another piece of pattern cutting paper and joined it onto the bottom of the final template and  then decided how long the dress was going to be by drawing joining up lines from the dress template down onto the new paper for the back and the front. At the bottom of these lines I joined them up with a fold line and then drew two more carried on lines the same length as the previous lines and joined them up with a straight line, I then continued the pleat markings on from the dress template onto the new paper all the way to the bottom of the straight line, I decided to only use pleats on the front of the dress therefore I didn't have to do the same for the back template. 

Then came the extremely hard bit, which I may find hard to put into words but I will try my best. I firstly grabbed another piece of paper and put it to one side while I cut up the pleat template along the pleat lines. On the new piece of paper I drew one straight line across the top, I then grabbed the first cut up left side of the pleats and lines the top of it up with the straight line on the new piece of paper and taped it down, from this I drew a line 1.5cm away from the cut out pleat and folded the bottom piece of paper on this line, i repeated this technique with all of the cut up pleats. I then tapped all the corners of the cut out pleats down and stretched them out and pressed the paper flat. 

The final step of all the pattern cutting was to trace around the pleat template to create a final template including all the lines and pleats, I then wrote my information on each final template and filed it away. Then I ready to cut my material out!!