Reflection - Process of Final Garment

Draping fabric over a manikin was a task set by Sarah for one of the lessons. So we started doing so with some fabrics we found at home, some we had printed and some that we had bought. We started coming up with some quite extravagant designs but all flowed and weren't heavy all over. However we didn't stick to the draping because we had not imagined it like that. We also focussed and thought about the structure we had designed and we were mainly looking at the top of the garment for this feature. This really helped us figure out what fabric we wanted to use to create the look we were going for.

We went to a vintage shop in Manchester to try and find an old garment we could completely deconstruct and make into our own. We found a wedding dress that had a lot of ruffles and flowers but it wasn't this that first attracted us to it, it was the material it was made out of and we knew this was a key element we were looking for. Unfortunately we didn't take a picture of the wedding dress before we took it apart.

The first thing we did was deconstruct the entire dress and completely remove the top half. We then brought the waist line up to the neck line because it was soft, simple and round. Looking at the garment at that point we knew we needed sleeves so we took the original sleeves and pinned one back on because when we pinned both on there was too much going on. As the day went on we were pinning and messing with the dress, but we knew it was being printed on so we took it down and did a manutext print on it like our samples. 

This is the garment after we printed on it and we loved how bright the colours stayed. Adding the colour made it even stiffer and we needed a bit of structure on the bottom half so we kept it this way

We added some fabric Laura had bought from london which went well with the colour scheme we had chose for the front of the dress. 

As we kept looking at it and pinning it we were quickly disliking what we had done so it was back to the drawing board. We felt like we needed less fuss at the front and something more simple as the sleeve was quite overpowering. So we had a discussion and decided to make a simple front using one of our mautext prints, we chose this particular print because it had the large horse illustration on and we wanted to make this a feature.

We wanted to make the back on the dress completely different to the front. So Katie started experimenting  with one of our manutext prints and drapped it from shoulder to shoulder, as we knew this print was done using chiffon we knew it would drape nicely and be very light. We then layered frills to make a peplum at the waist, the middle one again being one of our prints. We felt having the frills brought the sleeve, the front and the back all together even though they were all completely different.

                                             

Below is a picture of some of the different stages we went through to get to the final piece we have now. Throughout this project I have learnt many things; how to do manutext and puff prints, how to make a garment and where to start, how to design a garment properly and mainly how to compromise with your group if you have any disagreements. I have enjoyed this experience as well because of how much I have learnt but I have also struggled being quite ill and having other things that upset the process and project, but even though all those things were unavoidable I think Laura, Katie and I persevered through all these and worked well in the end. 

The garment in itself was a challenge and after restarting the whole thing just days before the hand in deadline it is very successful and we are all pleased with it even though we would have done things differently looking back. As we had a sit down as a group we all said looking back we probably should have stuck with the draping of the fabrics but we are all still pleased and proud of our work. It took all of our different ideas and designs to get to the final piece and I feel we all eventually respected each others input and creativity. I would like to work in a group again and like to see what other people's ideas would be in other projects and what I would achieve in a different environment.

Lines of Enquiry - Printing on Leggings and Tights

We had a group tutorial on 6th May and after our peers looked at our incomplete garment,  we all felt something was needed to bring the finishing touches to our final piece like a pair of leggings or tights. Because it was our last day in the print room we acted immediately. We had mainly focused on two ways of printing, the puff print and the manutext, so we decided to stick to these methods and experiment with both. The first one we tried was for the tights; we decided to do a puff print on them because we didn't think the tights would hold all the ink through the manutext method. We used the old screen we had already made which had our roller coaster and fairground images on. We also used the same colour palette as our previous prints. Afterwards, when we pressed the tights they were a great success, the designs were quite raised from the surface and didn't peel away which had been one of our worries.

 

We then went on to do the leggings. We had two pairs of leggings so we could try using the manutext print on one as well. We did exactly same on to the leggings as we did with our earlier samples  and the results are great. None of us expected them to turn out so well, especially the tights, so we decided that we would display the tights with the top at the exhibition.  

Line of Enquiry - Samples

Throughout this project we have done quite a lot of large prints using bright colours and including different designs. On each print we have all stood at a corner and added our own illustration or design. We have then  rotated each print and added our own designs to those done by the others. We wanted to show our own ideas and style of drawing but sticking to the joint theme and colour palette. We used a wide range of fabrics including silk, cotton and chiffon to see how each fabric reacted to the ink and to determine which would work better. Some were positive accidents and really helped us determine what fabrics and colours we wanted on our garment.

                         Manutext

 Manutext. Cotton. 

 Manutext. Cotton.

        Manutext. Chiffon.

The above print was a very positive accident. This was a manutext screen print and when we printed on to this chiffon it was as bright as the others. However when it was steamed and washed, most of the colour disappeared so we were left with this pale, pastel print. Even though we didn't expect it to be of this tone, we felt it was a beautiful piece of fabric and we used it on our final piece.

        Manutext. Screen

 Manutext. Screen

  Manutext. Screen.

             Puff. Silk.

                     Puff.

Line of Enquiry - Muse and First Designs

In one of our first lessons with Sarah we looked at garment designing. Firstly we started to sketch out a head that would go with all our designs, I just went for it and created some very weird and wacky people, doing them quickly also helped me do quite a lot of them even though I was unable to get pictures of them all.

We then started creating outfits with long strips of paper and white board markers, looking at our images and putting aspects of all of them together. I used a lot of line and shape in my designs as i was focusing on the roller coasters, and the shapes in the negative spaces in my photographs of the big one.

     

                                           

Research - Roller Coaster Structure

As we had intended basing our project on the structure of the roller coasters, we furthered this research and we looked back at all our Pleasure Beach pictures. When we looked at all the different pictures we decided to bring the distortion of the images concept and roller coasters together.

Therefore we looked at the movement of roller coasters and how the bright lights are captured in photographs. We also put one of our pictures under the printer and distorted it again. The image it produced was quite dense and wasn't the look we were going for on our garment. We decided to include these movement images in our manutext prints, because of the value of line and colour and because they flowed more and felt less intense.

From this Laura designed some structural shapes to add to the garment. We made these with PVC and our manutext print stitched onto both sides. Pictures of the process are below.

Final Outcome

 

Research - Line of Enquiry - Use of Line

Using the illustrations from our sketch books we decided to work on acetate so we could lay our illustrations over some distorted images to see what this would look like. We decided against putting black line onto them because we didn't want the harshness of it so we just incorporated some of these into the prints in colour. 

Research - Michael Longhofer

In comparison, Michael Longhofer is an artist who uses the distortion of images regularly. Even though his work ranges from cityscapes to futuristic drawings,  the way he does this is what interests me. He also works with bold colours and in a very confident, expressive way, which is something we want to achieve in our project and garment. I looked at this artist when we did our own distorted images. His outcomes are similar to the ones we did but done in very different ways, ours being digitally done and his being painted. The appearance of the smudged lines, use of line and freeness of his paintings are some aspects that will be included in our garment.

Cortes Distortion

oil on canvas

Michael Longhofer

Lines of Enquiry - Printed Shirt

For one of our first printing lessons we were asked to bring in one piece of vintage clothing each. The piece I chose was originally a simple woman's cotton shirt, as a group we decided this was ideal to experiment and print on. I split each section up and decided to print on the large back piece. The print was a mixture of each of our own designs;  some hand painted and some done using the screen. My addition to this garment is the blue and pink curves running diagonally along, originally inspired by a picture I had from the Pleasure Beach. None of us had done a puff print before so it was a big experiment for all of us. We decided to use 3 pastel colours, yellow, blue and pink, but when we did the screen print and all the colours mixed together slightly which created green but this was a nice touch also.

When We put the shirt under the heat press I expected the ink to pop out and be very three dimensional but because of the thin layers I applied the finishing piece was not as we had hoped it would be. As this was our first attempt at this method, reflecting back, I feel we were and it was successful. Our success varied from the very linear, delicate drawing at the bottom left and right, then to a bold image at the top which was brought together by the flow of the curves coming through, it doesn't look as if we just placed anything anywhere. Each aspect was placed carefully and planned before we started. 

 If I were to use this method again I would certainly do my application a lot thicker to get that big puff affect that I was hoping for. In addition I would also lighten the blue parts of the curves, as the structure below has been slightly lost.