Final Design and Pattern Cutting

To accompany my sculptural shoulder piece I have decided to make an 80s inspired jumpsuit with halter neck and roll collar. I've decided in order not to detract from the subtle colour and print within my shoulder piece to create the jumpsuit out of a solid black fabric. To add extra volume I will gather at the back of the trousers and add three pleats either side at the front. Both the collar and waist band will be 5cm thick and will be one of the accents colours present within the shoulder piece.

I have created the pattern myself from basic pattern blocks. I adapted these basic blocks creating a halter neck and adding extra fabric into the trousers in order to accommodate for the pleats.

Further Development

Printed Pleats

I am really happy with how this piece is developing. The mint and black with the accents of orange, blue, red and yellow is really interesting. The colours are subtle and interesting. From this image below so far I have used, black and mint but i would also like to introduce this peach colour.

To make things more interesting I printed a darker orange fabric with pale peach paint. I really like how the print has worked but also how this subtle bit of print works within my piece.

Pleating

Pleating in this way is such a long and mathematical process as each of the stripes must be measured and bonda-webbed down, straight and equally spaced. I enjoy the process as I like technical and constructed textiles, I like how I can make such a floaty piece of fabric hold its shape and become so ridged. 

I am going to continue to creating these pleated pieces and fixing them into place in a more experimental way.

Getting back on track

I am so happy with this sampling as I can see how this could develop into a really lovely sculptural piece that is more dynamic and exciting. I love the communication of colour in the sample, how the black creates a shadow on the mint making it appear graduated and the bold flash neon. 

Sandra Backlund

For the future of my project I am starting to look at more sculptural fashion and so Sandra Backlund, although a knit designer, seems an obvious designer to look at. I like how her pieces seem so structural sound. Also, although they are big pieces they seem to compliment the body beautiful extenuating angels and curves. Referring back to my musical instrument images I will repeat these kind of angels and patterns in my designs using pleats.

Evaluation of garment 1:

When my garment got to this stage I realised there were many thing i wasn't happy about. I felt the colour was too garish, the fabric was too ridged, the shape of the garment was boring and typical and I felt it no longer represented my brief and initial research.

I have decided to leave this garment as it is and focus on something new as I feel as if I am moving in the wrong direction. My favourite sampling I have done so far is my pleated sample. I'd like to move on entirely ignoring this piece and focus on something new. Focus more on monochrome and pastels with only accents of these harsh garish primary colours.

Laser Cutting

Garment 1: Designing and colour choices

Keeping in mind the fabric that I am in the process of creating, I added it to one of my designs. I like how I have used mainly black, white and yellow with accents of the colours shown on colour way 2. Below I have inserted 3 different images of the same design with different pleated panels. Design 2 and 3 contain pastel colours, baby pink and sky blue, where as design 1 sticks to the theme of primary colours I previously studied. In order to make my final decision I am going to complete the dress without the bottom panel and then take it with me to a fabric shop and see what works well together in real life. Although I do want to work with pastel colours as well I might keep this piece as the centre piece in primary colours and have 2 other looks in more muted colours to compliment it.

Design 1

Design 2

Design 3

Printing Fabric on a large scale

I've begun to create my fabric on a larger scale so I have rolls of it to work with. I decided to stick to colour way 2 for this initial design.

 I bought my fabric and decided to go for a man made synthetic fabric to give off a modern, clean and ridged look.

For this first garment I want to create a print like below and use the red as an accent colour as well as pastel pink and blue.

On my screen I have exposed a negative design of my original charcoal drawing to music. I will now print this with black onto white fabric ready for the laser cut acid yellow to be bondawebbed onto the top.

As the fabric is developing I have experimented with laser cutting the acid yellow. I really like how the colours work together and I also like the contrast of the clean cut element of laser cutting with the patching more artistic strokes of the screen print.

Laser cutting samples

With the nature of screen printing being so transparent I decided to look into other more apache ways of printing my fabric. I decided to start sampling with the laser cutter and bondaweb. 

Laser Cutting Samples:

I am so happy with how this samples have turned out, they're clean and crisp and clearly portray my pattern in a bold and dynamic way. I am going to move forward with this style of sampling, maybe putting the same pattern next to each other but in reversed colours as inspired by Kenzo SS12.

Josef Alber's Interaction of Colour

When thinking further about colour I referred to Josef Alber's book on the interaction of colour. To try and spark some further inspiration I have created my own patterns in his colour ways in order to see how they work with my designs.

Colour Way 1:

Colour Way 2: