Textiles in the making

For my hat construction I planned to laminate the material to make it more structured once I’d embellished the felt base. I did a test run on some lining fabric and it laminated fine however when it came to laminate the felt it didn’t stick. This caused a complication on the design. I continued to embroider and felt the head piece but after finishing this it wasn’t structured enough and I found the felt to messy and it looked incomplete.

I now plan to just use laminate which I will stripe with red, white and blue thread. This will be more structured and make a better head piece for the crown of my hat.

I look forward to completing the hat today

After thinking today about my hat design I have decided to change my final hat that I wish to produce. My reasons for this are that after speaking to Tracy she mentioned my hat was simple and after thinking about it realised it wasn’t flamboyant enough for the ‘ladies day’ project we are doing.
Therefore I have switched to a different design which is much more extravagant than my original hat I planned to do. This one will be in a crown shape influenced by the coronation crown which fits in with my theme ‘UK Celebrations’.
I need to incorporate different textile methods onto the hat which will be: felt balls, free hand embroidery and feather manipulation.

The hat will still be designed to be worn at a street party for the diamond jubilee.

Over the Easter holidays I sort of lost track of professional practice, i didn’t realise I had so much work to do until i got back to college! Jayne expressed in my ELIP that not being organised it quite unlike me which I believe is true last year I was careful to make sure I had all my folders organised weeks before dealine where as this subject seemed to slip thought my fingers alittle bit.

After planning out what needs to be done with the help of a criteria sheet from Jayne I managed to get all the necessary information for my folder with only a few bits left to get. I felt that I needed to be pushed slightly into this as I had lost my enthusiasm for all the written work. But once I got started I did find it a lot easier than i imagined.

Over the next week I plan to get through all my annotations for this folder as I know this will be a lengthy process. I was unfortunately not able to get a placement so I have had to do my report on the professional practice around me at work and at college. As i work in a health and beauty store Not all my work practices I can relate to fashion but most of them are general retail procedures so I should be able to link them.

I look forward to finishing this module as it’ll be a wait off my shoulders!

After pretty much completing my report I am now thinking about my final outcome . I have been looking at fashion and art so I was thinking of doing a collection. I discussed this with Jayne and she mentioned to me to make it different and quirky so I have come up with the idea of graphic pop art t-shirt’s.

I will use designs from famous pop artists such as Roy Litchenstien, Andy Warhol and Mel Ramos.
I think this will be a good idea as it will be easy to produce a couple of final pieces. I shall use special printer paper to transfer to image to a shirt whilst ironing. I can also adapt the t-shirt: crop it, rip it and singe the edges to make it look quirky and unique. I can also adapt the image by cutting it into pieces and overlapping parts whilst ironing it on to give it an uncontrolled effect.

I am really looking forward to starting these designs and producing a few final pieces.

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Health and safety

This notice is also up in our main room. It goes through all the rules of the studio and most importantly the industrial sewing machines.
Most of these rules are common sense to keep yourself safe however I think it is a good idea to have them up for reference if a pupil is unsure of what is right or wrong when using the industrial machines. It’s also a good idea for someone new to the machines to give them a read before continuing to work just for their own safety as they wi know what to do in an emergency as the sign explains about the power of the machines.

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Health and safety

This sign is found in our main room within college. I believe that this sign is posted in every room to inform students who to contact if in a emergency. Also any accident must be reported to a lecture to be out in the accident book. Some classes might also have a ‘near miss’ report for when an accident almost happened. This is so you can record what happened and why and to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again and result in an accident

I think these are very useful and well placed. If an emergency did ever occur then we know exactly where the sign is because we see it everyday on the door so we know where to find the information for a first aider.

Erin Petson.

This is the illustration that stuck out to me the most. The use of the embroidery swatch is very clever and also would work great to show off fabric on my final design board, even the beading I plan to do as well for my dress in introduction to specialist. I will definitely be using his technique.

Erin Petson.

This is so minimal yet so beautiful. I love how the colour and thick line looks free and uncontrolled. It looks like this was sketched then inked and maybe gouache was used for the colour.

I came across Erin just from googling fashion illustrators. I found one of her pictures and instantly googled her name for her website. I think her illustrations are so stunning! They way she incorporates different elements like masking tape or swatches of embroidery really give it an edge and bring it to life. I will defiantly be using her style as inspiration for my final design boards.

I will follow this with some individual pictures and comments

Now it’s the last couple of weeks before the deadline and I feel in starting to feel unorganised. Teachers have expressed this is unlike me and I feel it is too but lucky I feel I am gradually getting back on top of my work. I feel I need to concentrate more in class as I believe that has been my downfall this year. I am feeling that I now lack the enthusiasm for the written based assignments to do them at home. Jayne did express that exploring specialist and professional practice will be quite tedious however it must be completed for a good mark so I really have to pull my finger out and get back on task.
To be honest the though of little time does drive me to get things done however I wish I had thought about the stress level of this before and got it under control.

This year I also lacked slight creativity in my sketchbook for textiles. This resulted in my re doing my book over the Easter holidays but now it is all up to date and creative I am happy with it and can move on to focus on the construction of my hat and my final design board.

This also applies to sue’s lesson introduction to specialist, I have had to apply more background colour to my sketchbook pages to make them more creative and tie in with my theme. This didn’t take me long but I now feel happy enough to move on from my book and focus more on my final design board illustration which I need to find a style for.
This will be helped by my illustration work from last year. First I will find a illustrator I like the style of and a outline for my model and adapt it to suit the style I’m going for.

If I have time I might construct my working drawings on indesign to support my hand drawn working drawings. I did this last year and was quite good at it so if I have time I would like to do that.

All in all I feel I am slowly starting to get what I need to do done I just need to stay focused and positive about my work