Blog 7
Evaluation - Locating Unit Project Briefs
The journey through
the Locating Unit has been challenging, working through two different briefs within
the time. The first brief I worked on
was the Engineering Embroidery project. For
this I had to produce designs for the interior of a Rolls Royce, which I learnt
was a very luxurious brand. I have brought into this the embroidery skills
I have learnt over the two years of university and designed the inside of the
roof of the car because for me that was the most interesting place for a bespoke
design. Starting from this I have
produced a range of coordinated samples.
The methods I have used for my
samplings are tailor tacking, smocking and hand printing using pigment dye as
well as using embellisher. I have experimented with some other techniques
but the samples I have really enjoyed working with are pigment dye and tailor
tacking on top.
I chose the “The
Association of Fashion and Textile Courses Award” which is part of the “Bradford
Textiles Prize” for my second brief. I
chose this brief because recycling was involved. I have gone around getting discarded materials
from the fashion bins in the university as well as from charity shops. By collecting
the materials, I have constructed samples to demonstrate how we can recycle and
re-use fabrics. People throw away meters
of materials sometimes in the fashion bins, which extremely useful because I feel
it is better to reuse than to buy. I have also recycled in previous units.
I took my
inspiration for this brief from the Manchester Museum because I’m really interested
in the marks that showed in the fossils. I have used pin- tucking, tailor tacking, smocking,
applique, machine embroidery, trapping yarns in between sheer and solid fabrics,
as well as using puff binder. For one of the applique samples I burnt strips
of synthetic organza and used French knot to attach it. My
samples are going to be adapted into fashion.
My colour
theme is very subtle with monochrome and a few other colours such as yellows,
blues and browns that I took from the pictures I had taken of the fossils but, to
my disappointment, my samples are mainly monochrome. I need to look at my colour theme and samples
regularly as I work, to see where I’m going and try to use the full range of colours. In the first project I’ve brought in a lot of
colour by dyeing and printing which I really enjoyed, and I should have brought
some of that into the second project.
When I look
at the two sets of samples side by side, I’m much happier with the Rolls Royce
project because of the colours and methods. I need reduce the size of the samples, because
some methods take a long time and by cutting down, I could concentrate on other
work. For future projects I would like
to concentrate more on developing pin tucking, tailor tacking and smocking,
fabric dyeing and printing.
