Completion!

I'm extremely proud to say that my skirt is (almost - bar hooks and eyes) FINISHED. And to be honest, I'm very happy with it. I do think that I kept in line with my word ('ethereal') and my theme ('The Cottingley Fairies). I think that I have indeed created the perfect dress for my clients - Frances and Elsie. In the true family spirit, they can share the skirt and wear it to the many glittering evening garden parties they'll attend in the roaring twenties - dancing like the little fairies down by the brook.

This morning was spent making the final pieces for my skirt - nearly there! 

Re-doing Fabric, Illustration and Mood Boards

Today I did a lot of work on my fabric, illustration and mood boards.I realize that I need to keep the boards more simplistic, and in keeping with my theme. The main board I have to work on is my illustration (which I'll also need to practice a lot of over the summer!

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Sorcha O' Raghallaigh

Irish fashion designer Sorcha O'Raghallaigh is such an inspiration. She too attended L.S.A.D. before completing a masters in London's Central Saint Martin's. Her avant garde collections are a perfect embodiment of the word 'ethereal' - they are other-worldly and mysterious. Sorcha has designed for such high prolific persons as Lady Gaga and has worked with Vogue, Dazed and Confused, Tank and many more. She was also selected by Selfridges in 2012 as part of their Bright Young Things project.

I like many aspects of her work that I've seen. Namely her beautiful use of texture and colour simultaneously.  I also love how her garments feel like they're from myths and legends. Also, I'm drawing great inspiration from her illustrations with are just as magic as the garments they tell us about.

Cherry Blossoms in the Streetlights. 

Pattern Cutting and Toiles

The last week or so has been devoted to learning how to cut the basic skirt pattern and applying the method to our individual skirt patterns. Initially I found it quite difficult, but of course with a bit of practice I was able to plan and construct the pattern for my toile. I made my toile out of skirt lining, which I thought was similar in weight to my actual fabric. After much trial and error, I was happy with my final toile. I didn't make the whole three parts to the skirt (as this would have been unnecessarily time demanding) but focused on the part of the skirt that would be around the waist, perfecting darts etc.

Today I begun, for the first time, working on the stand. I took my swatches and placed them strategically on the lower half of the mannequin. From doing this I formed a better understanding of how well the swatches worked. I also took pictures from multiple angles and pull the shapes from these images to apply to the croquis.

Fairy-Stitching

This was by far my favorite swatch! For it, I made little cherry blossoms out of the light-weight material, then ironed them. I ironed them to make different flattened formations and then loosely stitched them together - like fairies stitching flower petals together! I'm going to use this swatch for the majority of my skirt as I think it keeps in with my subject and theme very well.

The Cottingley Fairies

These are the beautiful images taken by Frances (16) and Elsie (10) of each other with the Cottingley fairies. The girls would return every day to watch the little fairies flutter by the little brook at the end of their garden., and eventually decided to photograph the stunning creatures . I'm using the images that Frances and Elsie took as a basis for my inspiration for this project. There's an endless amount of swatch inspiration that I can source already  - the girls' hair, the flowers, the fairies' skirts, the trees..... 

When I think of 'Ethereal', i think of haunting beauty. I think of beautiful, mystical forests of pink cherry blossom trees billowing in the wind. The soft petals being caught on a breeze and flying through the air...

I'm going to use the cherry blossom tree as my main research point. I intend to do so by recreating the blossoms through various fabric manipulations and also by allowing images (including my own) of blossoms to inspire my work on the stand and in my sketchbook.

e·the·re·al  (-thîr-l)

adj.

1. Characterized by lightness and insubstantiality; intangible.

2. Highly refined; delicate. See Synonyms at airy.

3.

a. Of the celestial spheres; heavenly.

b. Not of this world; spiritual.

4. Chemistry Of or relating to ether.

Typography

Since Monday we've been experimenting with typography. For me, I have to come up with as many ways as possible to depict my word 'Assemble' through different types of type. I have to really analysis my word and see what works. What colour is 'assemble'? Is it serif or sans serif? Upper case, lower case or a mixture? Bold, italic or roman? They're the basic questions but we also have to look at all kinds of references that we like. Such a multitude of ways to express one word!

A S S E M B L E

 

Seeing as my collage idea wasn't exactly working out for the best, I decided to go with something simple - yet I think it communicates 'assemble' quite well! I thought about assembling something that you wouldn't usually assesmble.. or would usually disassemble - an orange! So I bought a single orange, took it apart.. then put it back together again. As research I've been looking at assembly sheets of toys, furniture and even things as simple as cardbord boxes. I think it'd look great as an illustration, but it'll need to be precise!

Illustration references

 

Visual Communications (week 1)

This week I've started into my second elective, Visual Communications. On Monday we were all given a word and for this week, we are to come up with an illustration that communicates this word. My word is 'Assemble'. I quite like it - not too complicated and I already have lots of ideas based around the word. For Monday and Tuesday we continued with thumbnail drawings - ideas for our main illustration -taking any ideas associated with our word.

 

^ my desk on Tuesday!

During the last few days, we've been working with our light, medium and heavy weight fabrics. I've taken a few of my favorite designs and translated them through each fabric. So far, my favorite fabric's been the light-weight muslin. I love how it flows and almost adds it's own life to a design. It's not as strict as the heavy-weight oil cloth.

Some beautiful pictures of Christopher Kane's Spring/Summer 2013 show from 'Show Details'.

 

 

 

 

Knitwear Assesment!

Today we set up our knitwear for assesment. It was alot of hardwork but I was really happy with my outcome. For my main piece, I first made an ombre pink shawl, with wide stitching and fringing. I experimented with a variety of yarns: I shredded a white t-shirt and soaked it in berry tea (which gave the yarn a dusty pink color); used white netting and bought yarn; made a colour story based on the artwork of Australian installation artists 'Pip and Pop'; and finally I made my own arn. I put my newly aquired felting skills to use and added some watered down poster paints to the wool before felting it. Then whilst it was being felted, the colours ran sublty into each other and into the wool, creating a cool tie-dyed yarn. From the coloured yarn (and also some white netting) I made a little neckpiece to add to my display.

 



 

 

 

 

This morning we begun working on our croquis, bringing our 3D mannequin work back to a two dimensional quality. It took me a few goes to realise that what I place on the croquis, can't just 'float' on the body, they have to be structured around the body. I chose my first shape from my mannequin pictures and begun to photocopy, trace, enlarge and extract from the image, applying it in different ways to the croqius. It was lots of fun really, seeing what works and working out new ways to transform the silhouette. I had a little time on the manequins today aswel. Unlike what I did previously, I isolated  parts of the body and focus on the silouettes of these parts. Pamela and Mairead went oround to us today talking to us individually about our pieces. Feedback is always welcome!

 

 



 

 

 



Rodarte

Laura and Kate Mulleavey are the founding duo of California based Rodarte. The sisters studied liberal arts before deciding to follow their true calling. Creating fanstatical outfits that could be found in one of Grimm's tales, in a Japanese horror film or a ballerina, Rodarte has gained cult (and celebrity) status and a dedicated following amongst the fashion elite.

 

I've always been an admirer of Rodarte since spotting some of their spider-web knits and reading an interview in Instyle. Yesterday, they were the first to spring to mind when we were being introduced to knitwear. They create such beautiful and elegant designs, almost fairy light, that seep with angst-y feminity.

 

 

I think these jerseys are just beautiful. The combinations of colours, yarn and spaced stitching is an artform in itself. The piece modelled by Natalie Portman below is simplistic but utterly unique.

 

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/fashion/rodarte-natalie-portman/

Knitwear

Today was allocated to knitwear with Liz. We were told to be prepared - to know how to cast on, knit, purl and cast off. Thankfully I've known how to knit since I was seven, but I had to teach myself to purl over the weekend (thank goodness for Youtube tutorials!)

Liz explained some of the terminology associated with knitwear to us and show how you can make yarn out of almost any kind of material. The importance of colour was especially stressed. We all chose a colour story from our sketchbooks/contextual study and were brought to the yarn room to pick out our coloured yarns. I picked, from my contextual, a picture of a piece done by Australian contemporary artists, Pip and Pop. Acid-y and pastel colours prevailed (as they always do with me) and I picked out some pretty lilac blues, bubblegum pinks, lime greens and lemons.

Felt making was really interesting in the second half of the day. Liz showed us how to create felted yarns from pure wool and also how to add colour and different threads tp it to create pattern.

We don't have knit again until next Tuesday (our knitwear assesment!) I must do some planning as to what I'm going to do for my final knitwear piece - what yarns to use, stitched, size kneedles etc....
I'm pretty excited for this knitwear project!

 

 

 

 

    (my felting)