Vintage evaluation

The era I chose for this project was the 1950’s, originally I wanted to look at women of the 50’s but as I was short on time this wasn’t really an option so I changed it to women’s fashion, for a while I looked mainly at dresses and then when I went to do my final designs I thought they all looked quite generic and plain so I changed two of the designs and I knew I wanted them to still relate to women so I tried to get two things that are seen as quite feminine.

The research I did was based on pinterest. I looked at many different things that were linked to the 1950’s and from looking at that I managed to come up with a few different ideas on what i could base by final pieces of bunting on and idea on how I would like mine to come out.

I developed my ideas from my research sheets to my bunting by trying to include as much as I could from the sheet work and trying to develop the research so that when it came to making the actual bunting I would be able to make them as quickly as I could and so that they were well made as I didn’t have much time to get them done.

To produce my bunting I took the calico and covered it with another material for the background as I was running short on time and I didn’t really have time to do much else with it. One of my designs was just a print out and then I used a sewing machine to stitch all the way around the image, I decided to use a straight stitch because my sewing machine has a habit of the thread getting caught inside the machine when it is on anything other than a straight stitch and I didn’t want to risk ripping the paper if this did occur. My second design was just a plain dress that I cut out of a scrap of fabric and then I used a zigzag stitch to go around the edge of the fabric to secure it, I also added lace to the top of the bunting as I thought it looked very plain without it. My third design was another dress which I got the design from a picture from a 1950’s magazine, I got some scrap fabric and cut it up into small shapes and then layered them and I used a straight stitch to secure each row and then I cut out a part for the body of the dress and used a zigzag stitch for that part. For the final design I did teacups and I used a few print offs and stitched them on and then I drew a tea cup and used thread the fill in the space on the cup and once I had done that I stitched the piece of fabric with me design onto the bunting.

I think I managed my time management as well as I could with the small amount of time we were given to complete the project. I did struggle at points but I managed to just get everything do to the best possible standard. I don’t think it made a difference that it was for a client because I am always working towards deadlines and I thought this to be the same as any other project.

I’m fairly happy with the project overall but I do think some things could have gone better and I think I would have benefited from more time as I don’t think I could really get the best standard of work done in such little time, I also believe that my final pieces could have been improved and that my idea sheets could have looked better, however, other than time constraints I think it went well and I got everything done on time.

Pinterest board
http://uk.pinterest.com/mollieprentice9/vintage-ideas/

You, as an individual evaluation

For this project we looked at our lives and then made a cushion that would relate to us. At first I looked at doing my family and my first idea was to do a cushion on where everyone in my family live but as I did more work in my sketch book I started to get different ideas, so my final design is based on important places to me that are in the UK, for example I have the place I was born, places I’ve been on holiday and where important things have happened to my family such as where my brother finished part of his training for the army.

The research I did was mainly primary, I got photos from the places I’ve visited either from Facebook or pictures I had at home, and the secondary research I did was mainly in my sketch book and it was for the artist research, the artists I looked at were louise Gardiner, Rosie James and Dorothy Russell.

 

I developed my research by doing two design pages in my book and looking at which would be more suitable and which I would be able to do in the time I had, I also looked at ones that would really relate to myself and once I had chosen which design I wanted to do I changed little parts of it to make it better.

 

For this project I produced a few different experimental pieces, I first did weaving on the peg loom and this was quite a long process which I decided not to include in my final piece as I thought it was too time consuming and I didn’t really feel it fit in with my design. Another process I did was felting, I did this in a previous project and quite liked it so I decided to include in my final project, I wanted to include a few things on my cushion so I used the felt I made as the markers for the map. One other process I did was mark making, i used Procyon dye and wax on the majority of the samples; although I didn’t use mark making on my cushion I did use the Procyon dyes.

 

To decide what fabrics I would use I looked at all the different fabrics available in college and then I weighed up the pros and cons of each one, we all discussed them and how well they would work with the type of cushion we were making. I wanted my cushion to be a usable one rather than a display piece so I needed my fabric to be durable and easily washable so i decided to use cotton for the map and a medium calico for the cover itself.

 

I don’t think I would have used different fabrics for this, however, I think if I would have had time I may have done a different shade of green for the map as I wasn’t that impressed by it but I think I would have left everything else the same as I followed my design to the best of my abilities.

 

My chosen artists and designers linked to my work as Dorothy Russell was a quilting artist I looked at while I was doing some quilting for a sample in class and Rosie James and Louise Gardiner were artists I looked at for my contextual studies also Louise Gardiner does applique and free machine embroidery. These artists didn’t really influence my work that much, however I did use applique on my cushion.

 

I talked to a few of my peers and my tutor about my design and they gave me some ideas on which would work the best, once I decided the design I added a few things to my design and talked about the changes to friends to see if they thought it would work well.

 

I think my cushion could be easily reproduced as it is a fairly simple design and it didn’t take as much time as I originally thought it would.

 

The processes I used throughout this project are felting, applique, sewing, dyeing, free machine embroidery and quilting, although I looked at all these processes I decided not to use them all on my cushion as I didn’t think I had time to include that many also I didn’t feel that they would fit in to the kind of cushion I wanted.

 

I believe that the majority of this project went well and only a few thinks went a little wrong but the few things that went wrong actually worked out in the end, for example, when I dyed my calico and washed it some of the colour ran and because I was washing it in a small sink I had to scrunch the fabric up slightly, this caused the colour to be slightly darker on theses creases and I couldn’t get rid of them but once I have sewn and completed my cushion I thought that where the darker creases were it looked quite interesting and effective because it broke up the solid colour on the calico which I think worked out well. If I were to change anything I think I would move the markers slightly as they were a little off when I stitched them on, but other than that I think I like how it turned out.

 

I don’t think I used my blog effectively as I forgot to use it for the majority of the project.

 

Overall I am very happy with the final outcome as I think that I worked as hard as I could and to the best of my abilities, I followed my design and tried to include as many processes as I could for my design. Also I think I managed my time well throughout the project apart from a few parts where I spent too much time on parts when that time could have been used elsewhere.  

Final Piece- Cushion

This is my final piece, i deiced to look at the places i like to go or places that mean something to me. The processes i used were, dyeing, felting, heat transfer and applique. I really enjoyed this project and i think that everything went well. I decided to do an envelope cushion as i was unsure of how to sew a zip on and i wasn't confident enough to attempt a zip.

Artists

These are all my artist research sheets i did for this project. I don't think any of them really influenced my cushion apart from Louise Gardner as she did a lot of applique which i did decide to include on my cushion. I liked looking at theses artists as they did give me some ideas towards my final piece but in the end i chose to only really look at the way Louise Gardner did her work.  

Idea sheets

These are my idea sheets, i looked at my design sheets and took parts off those to create these, i like most of them, but i know that they probably wont all work that well so i had to pick the one i knew would be possible to do in the time i had.

Quilting

This process is called quilting, you have two pieces of calico and a piece of wadding  you then divide the calico up with lines and make sure they are even and you pin them down from the inside to the outer to make sure that when you sew it will be even and you wont get fabric creasing. once it is pinned down you have to start sewing form the middle line and work out as it will have the same effect as when you pin it. i liked this process and believe it went quite well.

Applique and mark making

In this workshop we did mark making using Procyon dyes and wax as well as other materials, we then took the cotton and calico samples, cut them up and then sewed them onto another piece, this process is called applique, i quite enjoyed this and found it interesting how you could take some samples and create a good piece of artwork that looks really effective.

Textiles

For my chosen specialism i have to create a cushion, so in my first workshop i did weaving, this is a process where you use a loom and take wool and wrap it between pegs and you build it up until you get to the end of the thread. once it has gotten to the length you want you cut the thread and you have your woven piece.
I quite enjoyed this process, but did feel that it took quite a long time to complete but i liked the look of it. I also tried to do a square of knitting to show that i explored a few other processes other than the ones we did in class.

Design sheets

When we started this project we were asked to do a couple of pages on ourselves and include as much as we could about yourself, mine was mostly based on my family and places i like to be and family pets. i enjoyed these pages because i got to look at things i had forgotten about myself and it helped me decide on how my final design would look like and other possible ideas.