Final Week

This week consisted of our garments coming together and being finalised.I found many aspects of this task challeging as I have had no previous experience in making a garment, however from making numerous mistakes has made me learn more and to understand how garments are made.

The channel zip on the front of this design was part of the dress which I found challanging as I wanted the zip to sit right. After I had experiemnted with it a few times I had eventually got it to sit in the correct position and additionally added top stitch for additional detail.

I feel the grey fabric within this design really helps berak up the dress and highlights the zip detail. To being the dress to a neat finish I used a bound hem which got rid of all the ruff edges, however I found this task very difficult to achieve a neat finish, however after a few attempts i evetually got the hang of it.

Illustration

With my final illustration I wanted to encapsulate what out designs were based on. I used various different types of meida to really make my illustraion exciting amd to also reflect the clolour mood within it. I have illustrated my group members garment design . I feel i could have emphasised the dress more with more negative space.

Week 22 - Pattern Cutting

This week involved passing our pattern designs to another member within our group in order for them to produce the actual dress. We had to ensure the pattern was perfect in order for the final garment to be faultless. Here is my toil that i will be making up in the chosen fabric which the designer has chosen.

Pattern consists of 12 pieces

zip on front panel

invisible zip on side seam

Front View

Back View

Front Pattern Pieces

Back Pattern Pieces

When transferring the pattern pieces into fabric i had to ensure that the grain line was going the correct way and additionally measuring it to the salvage edge. The designer of this dress had chosen cotton drill as her fabric which is a good fabric to work with and additionally works well with her design.

Here are images of my dress developing, I have currenly completed the base of the dress along with te back panels.



Week 21 - Dye workshop and pattern cutting

Dye Workshop

This workshop allowed us to understand how direct dyes work with a variety of different fabrics and their contents. The fabrics we were working with were:

cotton and silk

viscose and linen

silk and viscose Velvet

viscose crape jorgette

Put spoonful of dye in warm water and heat up on hob, make sure all the dye as dissolved within the solution.

Pour warm water into another bowl and add salt. Heat up until all salt is dissolved and add this to the dye. The salt within the solution helps to react better with the direct dyes.

Then make sure fabric is damp before adding to the dye. Wait until the fabric has transformed into the  desired tone of  colour.

Rinse fabric under cold water to ensure the reaction is still not taking place

Wait until dry.

Here are my samples which I produced from direct dyes. You can achieve darker tones by leaving the fabric in the dye for a longer period of time. The fabric which I feel worked the best was velvet, It really took to the fabric and looks very rich in colour.

The process involved spoon in the powder into a bowel and mixing it with water whilst stirring on the hob to allow all the colour to dissolve within the liquid, salt watered mixture was also added to the dye as this works well when working with direct dyes. When the fabric had been dyed then cold water needs to be used to stop further reaction from taking place.

Week 20 - Pattern Cutting, starting toiles and sewing file.

Pattern Cutting

Within our groups we had now came to a decision as to what our designs would be, and from our sketches and technical drawing we now had to establish how we would pattern cut these designs.  My friends design that I had to pattern cut consisted of the same dress block shape, however I had add and remove darts in different places in order for the pattern to work.

Basic Dress Block, drawn from my template and adjusted to my friends design.

Adding and Removing Darts

After adding seam allowance and all the additional details such as centre front, darts, balance lines etc I then was able to transfer these patterns into calico to enable me to get a ruff idea as to what the dress will appear like in the designers chosen fabric/

When sewing the dress I had to ensure that my seam allowance was 1cm through out all the seams.

Front of the dress

Samples

Patch Pocket

Invisible Zip

Bellows/Cargo Pocket



Week 19 - Pattern Making & Sewing Skills

Patten Cutting

This activity was for us to achieve an understanding of seams and how fabric patterns can be transformed with the use of different techniques.

Using out basic pattern block we transferred this onto dot and spot paper and added a seam allowance of 2cm around the outside using a pattern master.

We then had to form our paper dress on the stand ensuring that we had draw on the centre front with a red pen along with the balance lines and  use a tracing wheel to transfer where the darts would form on the dress. We then placed sellotape over the whole dress form to hold when taken off the manikin.

Once the dress was covered in tape we had to place lines on the dress which would represent seams, which we would cut apart to form individual shapes.

After we had drawn our seams  it was a case of ensuring all the individual shapes laid flat in oder for us to see the pattern and decide whether or not we wanted to manipulate it, in order to create: gathers, flare etc.

Sewing File

Channel Seam



Run & Felled Seam (jean seam)

Plain Seam

Pointed/Corner Seam

Trench Seam

Curved Seam

Samples

Broadwick Silks