I had my first fashion class during my spring quarter at school, and the
class was Intro to Fashion Design. For our final project we had to
design and make a garment inspired by an abstract painting. The goal
was to create a garment that reflected the shape, color percentage, and
overall mood of the painting that we chose. I chose the below painting
by Clive Watts.
Once we had decided on a painting we had to draw 10 croquis designs of
the front, side, and back view. We were encouraged to think and draw
like a sculptural artist, because our professor wanted the class to
think about volume and each angel of the design. We were given the
option to make our garment out of
non-conventional materials, but after going through the whole school
year
without any sewing assignments I was longing to get back on a sewing
machine so I chose to work with fabric.
Once my design and materials were chosen, I started the
construction. This was the hardest part of the project, because I had
never sewn anything like this before. Drafting this garment took quite a
bit of problem solving. At first it was going to be one dress, but
after thinking about how I was going to line it, I decided that it would
be easier to make it into two separate pieces. So it became a skirt
and a
blouse which made drafting a lot simpler!
In
my class for The Sewing Party I will be teaching how to draft and sew
these circular panels. If it's something that you'd like to learn you
can sign up
here!
To get the volume that I needed in the circular panels of the skirt, I
used a really cool material called Pellon! It's basically an
incredibly
stiff iron-on-interfacing. It keeps its shape so well, and was exactly
what I needed to create the volume of the circular panels in the skirt.
The last part of our project was to do a photo shoot of someone wearing
our garment to add to our portfolio book. I took these photos and my
lovely friend Carly modeled for me. Overall this was such a refreshing and fun project for me! I'm not sure
how many hours went into this project from start to finish, but I
basically lived in the Fashion Building for the last two-three weeks of
school.
I have about another week before my sophomore year starts. I'll be
taking Apparel 1, Fashion Sketching, and Art History 2. The Apparel
class will be
my first sewing class so I'm really looking forward to this upcoming
quarter! I'll try to keep up with sharing my projects with you as
they're assigned to me.
Hope you're having a great weekend!
