Evaluation

My last week doing this project has been very enjoyable as I was seeing my work coming together. As I have applied for an extension I still have some time to finish off my designs but below are pictures of my designs at this time. However my time so far doing this unit has been a great learning curve for me as a textile designer. I have experimented with equipment that I had not used before and I have had plenty of ups and downs. One of the biggest challenges has been having two projects at once, I chose to run both projects alongside each other as that was the best way for me personally and I am extremely glad I did this because ideas I had for one would inspire me for another and this is probably one of the reasons my colour palettes are so similar, I am especially proud of this because usually my time keeping isn't the best. However, I do feel my extension will help me develop my work even more. 

I am also pleased I have experimented more as well, for instance with the foils and printing my design on the digital printer. This helped me further my ideas and showed me how my designs and my colour palettes would look if I were to print them. 

In the last unit I was told that I was missing the work in the middle because typically I decide what my final designs will be and don't have much development work, however in this unit I feel I have used my development time sufficiently and had developed my work successfully so far even though I knew at the start my self incited project would be mens t-shirts and the Bradford live brief would be a pillow. In the next unit I am determined to finish it without an extension. 

These are my eight T-shirt designs so far, they are a mixture of photoshop work and my own paintings but zoomed in at different points. I have done my market research and designed what ladies garments I could put them on as well which you can see in my sketch book work.  

Below are the two ideas I have for my pillow for the live brief, even though this is not my own lace I have put this up because this is what I potentially want to do with my own lace design which I am in the process of making as you can see below 

My other idea is my tie dye layered under a photograph I took.

Combining Pictures

As I had finished all my painting and dying last week I decided to bring all of the different medias together in photoshop so I put the tie dye in the white sections of my paintings. I wanted to make it all the same colour as I had decided on my colour scheme so my tutor showed me how to do this on photoshop and the results were great and you can see those on my evaluation post.

I started messing around with all the different options and used saturation, posterize, brightening etc and it was really bringing it all together. I love all the colour in the ones below and the fact its so bright in some places but so dark in others and this is what I was doing with my pieces with missing sections. I also found out how to dissolve an image this week and that was really interesting on these as you can see on the bottom image.  

This is really good progression for my project and has helped me further my knowledge and my skills as well as helping me get closer to my final designs. I have really enjoyed working two projects at the same time and I think the way I did it along side each other is the best way for me. I wanted both designs and projects to be as strong as one another and I feel I have successfully achieved this. 

Tie Dying and Lace

As I said last week I was wanting to do some tie dye samples this week so after my tutorial I went on to do this, it was any easy method so it didn't take too much time. I got some jersey and some dylon dyes, diluted them and placed my tied pieces of jersey in the dye for 30 mins. I really love how I can tie them all differently and not one will be the same, they will all be individual. An aspect which I would love to bring into my pillows or t-shirts but in the market I am looking at it would be too expensive to get any profit. 

I also tried dying the lace below and left it in for the same amount of time and did the exact same process but it just didn't take the dye as well as I had hoped. The pattern was really faint so I edited it in photoshop because for my live brief I want to use dyed lace for my pillows so this was very disappointing. 

So now I know that some materials don't take to dye as much as others I tried layering my tie dye jersey underneath the lace to see how that turned out and the photos are below of this. Another thing I am wanting to do is design my own lace, none of the lace below are mine but I think if I design my own lace I will be able to make it look perfect with he tie dye whichever way I do it.