My final dress!... Goodbye year 1

6 MONTH PROJECT...

6 months of research, sketching, sampling, more sketching, toiles, spending money, stressing out, sketching, planning and constructing is finally over. Here is the end result.

2 WEEKS OF STRAIGHT KNITTING.....
Sat in the knitting room 9:00 - 19:00 bent over the knitting machine banging out a dress. The pattern itself was relatively simple but the fact that i had decided to individually place each strand of yarn in order to create a fluffy feathery texture turned it into a painstakingly slow process.

A little jolly to Castle Park for a photo shoot - courtesy of Photographer Hayley Brown

All for a 10 minute presentation!?!?

Barely even a flick through my sketchbook!

Final thoughts...... I feel slightly hysterical at the minuscule amount of attention given to my dress but at the same time i am glad to see it complete, and Even more ecstatic to not be sat in the knitting room anymore. 

I would like to give a special thanks to Flo Martin, Hayley Brown and Elly Peers for Photocopying, cutting threads, helping with knitting the last sleeve, modelling and photographing! Thanks guys!! mwah!

Bin Bag Dress

Another one of the 10 dresses that i made was a combination of bin bags and a floral charity shop skirt. I made many dresses out of bin bags, recycling bags... anything that was free! This thing kept ripping but luckily i could simply tape it back together! if only all clothing could be fixed like that! I particularly like this dress because of its nature to rip, and move and change every time i put it on!

This next dress also incorporates bin bags. The pink dress is a nightie from.... a charity shop! i didn't like the pretty, delicate look of the dress, it was also rather big and long and very tacky.... So i destroyed it! throwing paint at it and tarnishing it with a pumice stone was a great stress reliever especially as this was the 8th dress i had made and by this time the pressure was beginning to mount! The lace is from a haberdasher and cost 18p from their bargain bucket. The dress cost 30p, and the bin bag and embellishments were all things i had lying around! this was the cheapest dress out of my collection.

These two dresses are still on display at Norton Radstock college where i took my art foundation Diploma along with the A1 sized photographs which are posted on here.

This Saturday i worked at the Bristol Graduate fashion show, i turned up on the day expecting to be a model dresser. One of the models phoned in sick and next thing i knew i was on the catwalk! scariest thing of my life! Pictures to come...

Opposites Attract

I thought I'd give you guys a brief update of my final project. The Title was Opposites Attract. The opposites that i chose to look at were Ancient vs Futuristic. This covered everything from skyscraper buildings and neon colours to myths, gods, gold and jewels. Eventually i focused my research down the bird gods of egypt and began to look at the heiroglyphics and statues depicting these. I then began to look more closely at the actual birds that were represented.... Falcons, Vultures, sparrows....

The pictures shown are of my attempt to re-create some of the textures, colors and patterns that can be found on some of these birds in knit. The pink one is taken from the stubbly pink head of a Lappet Faced Vulture, (Below Top) and the grey from the 'blobby' skin around the head of a King Vulture (Below Bottom)

Along with creating fabric samples i have also created many jumbled up garment designs. Below is one of my favourites as well as some more fabric samples which i am currently developing to use for the final garment!!... I hope you've enjoy this post... Time for some more sampling i think!

  

Please leave a comment.... positive criticism is always welcome