From bad to great! : )

Well today was just another sunday, nothing special or anything. Except for the fact that i am extremely proud of my garment. I cant believe how much better it looks, it actually makes me feel happy looking at it. In a week I have made so many changes I didnt think were possible. The crit last week really opened my eyes on how to improve what i called and i quote ' my worst garment so far '.
By changing the colour of the topstitching, changing the zip, shortening the sleeves, putting two huge darts in the back, dramatically shortening the shorts, fixing the waistband and redoing the hem, it looks like a completely different garment.
I didnt know it could look this good.
Im probably just exaggerating how good it is, but you can decide that for yourself.
; )
A picture will be coming soon.

Crit

Well the crit is here and I have chosen the best pages from my sketchbook that I think will represent the whole thing as a whole.

I first started with research and I mean lots and lots of research. This led me to my chosen theme.

My theme is the rapture. A prophecised event in the Bible which fortels the end of this world along with all the people left behind (werent taken up to heaven) and the creation of a new world. I feel I was wrongly left behind in this world, and now have to face all the troubles that come along with it.

There are 7 Bowls of Wrath, that come and turn the world into chaos destroying some of the most important things man needs to survive. I was more interested in the 3rd and 4th bowls, in which the river and springs turn to blood, which will eventually reach the pipeline and ever home on the planet and the other is intense heat from the sun, as it just keeps getting hotter.

From there I began to look at things for my survival as without proper water and constant heat on people will start to go crazy and attack each other. Soon the Earth will become survival of the fittest. The thing is I dont want to fight, I just want to survive so I began to look into riot shields that police use to protect themselves in the masses of a riot.

I began designing with all these things in mind, and I thought about places these shield shapes as shoulder pads on the garment to see how it looks. I like this garment as it looks simple and safe but it doesnt have anything special about it.

I then thought about how the Earth would look whilst it is being destroyed and tried to show this in my garmennt design with reverse applique. This design isnt too good as it look like no thought or effort has gone into this design at all.

I then thought more about the structure of the garment and decided to use the strength of the riot shields to add from and shape to the hips. It gives a more feminine effect but also a strong powerful tone to the garment. So I decided to stick with this shape just develop it more.

This is my final design. It incoroporates everything I have talked about here and has organza sleeves as I want the arms to be covere from the sun but not so that they will overheat. The shorts will be weaved form black bin bags that are heated to give the effect it will get from the sun adn dark brown polycotton, The jacket will be a cream cotton that has been buried in the dirt to give a recycled look to the garment, as I dont want it to be pretty.

This is my landscape.

This is my final design sheet.

Design Development!

My designs were a mess to begin with. Im not going to lie! They looked like a superhero costume from a movie or something. I realised it was because i was trying to fit too much into one design. I wanted shoulder pads, gloves and a cape. In one garment these would just look like a mess and they did. Eventually i refined my ideas into simpler forms, for example instead of shoulder pads, i added structure and form to my garment. After many, many attempts i came up with my FINAL DESIGN. I am really proud of it, as it came from extensive research which had to be refined down so much and simplified that i changed my mind from gloves to no gloves etc.

FINAL DESIGN

I am still a bit unsure about the colour of the sleeves, so any comments would be appreciated. By using Paint Shop Pro I tried to recreate the smudged effect the fabric would get when it has been buried in the ground for a few days.

This is my development leading up to my final design.

The Rapture!

I jus realised that i havent even explained my theme and nothing makes sense without it.
So here you go!

Even after my lack of inspiration, i had finally chosen a theme that i was relatively happy with. I began to focus on the more spiritual, and prophesised side of how the world could end. Among Christians there is a prophecy that has been foretold in the Bible, in different ways but they all have the same meaning. It prophesises that one day Satan will rise up and enter heaven, but then he shall be vanquished and God shall prepare a new heaven. When this new heaven has be created Christ shall come to Earth and begin lifting the Christians into heaven, and away from the Earth. Everyone who is left behind will face the wrath of God. This comes in many different forms and takes a while to take effect, but one of the side effects is that the sea turned to blood. This causes all of the sea life to die, and due to this there willl be less oxygen available for those left on the land. Another wrath is immense heat. The heat is so strong from the sun that to survive protection is needed. This is Armageddon. The Earth will then be remade and after 1000 years the ones who were taken to heaven may return to the Earth, because everything is good again.

This probably makes no sense as my work so far has been on recycling, but the recycling element is my textiles side to the project. Janet Cooper's work inspired me as i have already talked about. These two themes do come together in my final design, with a few quotes from the Bible on the lining of my garment perhaps???

Recycling!

I began to think of other ways of making material seem old and distarught. To do this I heated up bin bags using a heat gun or hairdyrer to give it a distraught and burnt look. Here is how it turned out.

I then began giving fabrics a distraught look, i buried some fabric in my back garden and it gave a muddy, horrible effect.

This is the effect it had on this fabric.

This will be one of my final fabrics once it has been fine tuned and reached its maximised potential.

Saving the Environment!

My first inspiration came when i looked at the work of Janet Cooper adn Tamara Fogle. I liked the way they use recyclable materials in different ways. I began thinking that if the world did end you wouldnt have the luxury to pick and choose the material you get to use.

This Janet Cooper creation uses moss, netting and sticks to create a garment. I love the use of innovative and living materials. I originally had an idea to use real leaves on my garment but then the problem of them decomposing and rotting on the model was a bit too much to handle.

This Janet Cooper creation uses bin bags and bottle tops to create this light and breathable effect. Since the idea of using materials that were alive didnt work out in my thought process I then moved on to the idea of using recyclable materials that arent alive such as bin bags and netting.

I also looked at the work of Tamara Fogle. These handbags were made using antique German flour sacks from 1830 to 1930. They have the original marks and stains and holes in them. The black writing, which is different on every sack, has the farmers' name, and in some cases, the date the sack was made. I like the thought of using something that has been around for possibly 1 hundred years, and turning it into something beautiful, that still has its original markings.

Draping

Well it was a while ago now, but i thought it would be worthwhile to upload them anyway. We each brought in a load of old clothes and had a huge stack of clothes to choose from. It was to help us get inspiration for post apocalyptic scenarios that could influence our final garment. To be honest from the start of this project i wasnt inspired by anything and it jus made me depressed. I mean its not a fun thing thinking about the end of the world is it? Even after doing this exercise i had even less motivation for this project. But either way i still had to produce something so here are the drapings me and my group put together.

This was our first draping piece. We began by picking a scenario which wasa volcano and began looking for suitable colours and breathable materials to use. I like this piece as i am in love with Japanese culture and this reminds me of a Samurai suit of armour with the shoulder pads and the front panel piece.

This is the back of this piece.

This piece was developed from an idea of a scenario with no gravity. If there was no gravity there would be no structure in the world and everything would be floating around. Denim was used as it is quite a heavy material and you woulfd need one to keep you grounded on Earth. You would also need something to cover your faec to protect from the floating objects around you. I like this idea as it is original but i wouldnt take this idea any further.

This piece was all about wrapping materials around the body and keeping the heat in and the cold out. We also wanted to show off the silhouette of the body as we hadnt tried that yet.The colour palette works really well together but i dont like the pink, i think it ruins the distraught, helplessness of the scenarios we are trying to replicate and survive from in our designs.

This piece was about recycling and gathering any pieces or scraps of fabric we could find. We found this gorgeous embellished piece that we used and almost turned the garment, into a Greek Goddess like piece. It looks like patchwork and something that could be developed a lot further, but before i decide this more research was needed.