Week Nine. 14th April.

Using the smocked piece of fabric, I again started to experiment with visualising dress shapes by pinning the fabric onto a mannequin. I think with this fabric design, a very simple shape could be used:







However, this design felt as if it was missing something, I dip-dyed the bottom of the fabric to give a larger section of "block" colour across the bottom hem, and added a coloured band under the bust:







I would like to add some different textures into this though. I am sourcing a suitable suede to experiment with.

I began to experiment with block colour: having a simple dress shape in a solid colour with the smocked and printed fabric showing through:











After working on the colours of my repeat designs I reprinted these at A3 size. Although the colours were still not right, they were much better than before. I will use these samples to manipulate and experiment with, and will think about having these repeats printed onto paper rather than fabric for the final collection. I would rather have paper samples in correct colours than fabric in incorrect colours.

I hand printed four large (A1-A0) fabric samples using the acid dyes, ready to pleat, smock and manipulate. I aim to print of at least four of these a week. Although this does not sound like a large amount, these pieces are very labour intensive and time consuming, two prints can be completed in one day, which wil also need to be steamed and hand washed, and then worked upon in some way. I think four a week is realistic and achievable.

Week Eight. 7th April.

Using some of my previous repeat CAD designs I printed some digital samples onto Silk Habotai. Although the prints themselves worked, the colours were again, not right. I had printed these in RGB colour rather than CMYK. Using photoshop I adjusted the colours in several ways until I found something that could be successful. I will do more digital samples next week to try these.

I continued to experiment with pleating and smocking, and tried a new technique which was very successful, it still echoes the "net" effect as seen in many of the images I collected.

Week Seven. 31st March.

After printing a large length of fabric, I pleated and smocked it. I continued to experiment with garment shapes and pinned this on a mannequin. I am quite pleased with the resukts, the shape is simple, not distracting too much from the fabric pattern, but is still effective. I would like to incorporate a heavier fabric into these designs to give some contrast, and perhaps where here I have used a velvet ribbon I could experiment with suede, that has possibly been laser cut, thereby also incorporating a more structured image.







The direct prints that I have so far done, have been influenced, as I mentioned, by images of the sea and sky. This is for the colours, shapes and textures. I worked upon an image in photoshop which I then used as reference. I have again tried this and was very pleased with the results:





The colours, light and texture reminded me of some of JMW Turner's work:





Here is an original that I have only slightly changed- hue/saturation etc.

Research

I am interested in creating dresses using pleating, smocking, and other forms of manipulation. This is quite a strong trend this season.
Here is a selection of garments using these techniques:





I love this dress from Bottega Veneta S/S '07. It uses smocking in a really contemporary way, completely manipulating the fabric, it has a purpose rather than being a decoration.

Week Six. 26th March.

I was keen to continue with experimenting how I could use my fabrics, and as the print room was closed this week, it was a good time to work on them. After doing testers on smaller pieces of fabric I decided to iron pleats into a large sample and begin smocking it. The pleats were not all even, and whilst this is a sample and not of utmost important, I would not like this to be the case again, so after the easter break I will look into steam pleating using structered stencils to create even, perfect pleats.

I scanned the fabric in to create some repeat patterns.







Some of the small sections created really nice imagery:





Which are somewhat reminiscant of Geogia O'keefe's work:





Even though I had printed some digital pieces that did not entirely work, I was still keen to pursue digital repeat work, Which I think could very well have a place within this work: