Intro to Fashion Design: Class Final

Photography:  Esther Boller (myself).

Model: Carly Starnes

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!