Just a few more flowers

So these are just a few more scans from my textiles sketch book. I seem to be going in two directions, it’s either flowers (The garden of living flowers) or playing cards which I’ll hopefully have some more work on by next week so can upload some of that. But for now flowers seem an important part of wonderland as they help colour Alice’s world.

These sketches are just examples of how a simple dress could then be transformed by embroidery. This rose dress would be covered in woven roses, one of the techniques from my post below which I learned from the book Three-Dimensional Embroidery stitches by Pat Trott. I’ve learned a lot from this book and even find myself using her techniques when I’m not even sewing flowers for woven roses are a great way to fill in a perfect circle.

So for now I think I’ll keep going with the flowers but I think it would be interesting to look more into to the playing cards, using the colour scheme of black, white and red perhaps as this would create something much different and I’m finding when I try and stick to the pale blue dress my work can get quite limited and here already I’m leaning towards different colours. This is the point of this sketch book to try different things as it’s alright if it’s not perfect, I’m just exploring, but do think if I were able to make more than one dress by the time of our American Museum show to have one pale blue dress along with a red dress covered in playing cards or even just the symbols, this could then be something quite different, so I’m quite excited by this.

Alice in Wonderland

 So (just noticed that I seem to start all my blogs with so, no point changing now!) for my Alice project I'm using an old Alice through the looking glass children's book as my sketchbook. I've had some comments that the words are in the way you can't see the drawings, but I like working in a book and what I'm doing is going through the book look at the illustrations of the tale and using them as inspirations for each design. So there've been detailing in a fireplace and then I turn it into detail on the skirt of a dress. I find that it's a good thing to have something to refer to right there on the next page as I'm working as I've got my research folder but sometimes forget what's actually in there and so I use main sources of inspiration from the folder but for the smaller details I like working from my sketch book.

So I go through drawing a sketch of a garment on each possible page then look into what detail, what technique of embroidery could be used to decorate it. Here for example is a sample is of the kind of embroidery that would be used to cover the top of this dress. Different techniques such as French knots and weaving were used to create some of these flowers.

Here's another example of my work from my sketch book. This was a chapter that I choose to look into playing and the different ways to use them for designs of decoration. Then a quick sample of the type of fabric that would be used and then I used some woven roses to create the main body of the sign of a club.

Next I'm going to be continuing through the book and filling it with designs and samples, while creating some larger pieces that that I'm not just confined to the smaller size of my sketch book.

Drawing through a book

 

 So I’ve never been very good a fashion drawings also just been teaching myself but the drawing will still always come out a bit funny and I’ve taken out books from the library but other than tracing from them haven’t really found them very helpful but then I found a really good one with some good step by step instructions about spacing and such so hopefully I’ll start to get the hang of it if I keep at it and then not have to keep referring to the book in the end!

So for art I’ve been looking at buildings and different illustrations and artists, but I always wanted to lead onto a more fashion based project, so in my research folder I’ve been collecting tear sheets of fashion shoots from magazines which are all set in and around buildings so that hopefully there’s a link there for now and then I can perhaps like the effect or texture of brinks and stones to the fabric for maybe a dress.

So these collections of drawings all lead up to one when the 3 are layered on top of each other. I started a new sketch book to be dedicated to fashion drawing so hopefully I’ll be able to see improvement throughout the book but the first couple are just of using geometric shapes to create the body and that just started to make the book look a bit boring so I added a thick black line of what an outfit could be for the theme that I’m going for and then with this one started to add more detail with the brown criss-cross behind the figure giving the impression of perhaps stones, bricks, to give an idea of where this outfit for a photo shoot would be shot but drew to the new detail on top of the brown paper you can tell that’s it’s not to colour of say the top but of the background.

So to add some more texture to this piece, to make it more that a sketch. I got the idea for a pair of sequined trousers from one of my tear sheets. Where the outfit is all black bar these sparkling trousers, so I drew a quick impression of them but you still couldn’t really see what it was meant to mean, so I thought that even though the proportions of the sequins would be completely wrong so instead of covering the top layer of drawing with them I stuck them underneath the lines and rows of drawn sequins so that the colour can be seen from underneath. 

So next I’m just going to be focusing on practising my fashion drawing and experimenting with more ways of how to give an impression of a pattern rather than having to draw out every little detail.

 

Just add some lace.

So I’ve now neatened up the neckline by adding some binding underneath and lace over the top. I was able to apply the binding the pale blue is quick a thick fabric, there’s more than one weaved layers to it so I was able to hand stitch it down without the thread showing on the other side.

After ironing along the seam (which makes fabric easier to then press out) I then tuned out the lace still wouldn’t lay flat after steaming it down I then tacked it down just so it lays flat on the collar. I’ve also done the same to the ends of the sleeves along with gathering them up a tad, as much as I could with the fabric. I’m also going to add some lace to the hem but I’m thinking perhaps a different shade of cream or maybe add some more blue.

So that’s it for the main body of the dress, with the off cuts that I’ve kept (can’t seem to throw anything away) I’m going to practise some embroidery techniques to then see how they work with the colour and texture of the fabric and how easy it is to sew on.

Ellie Goulding, Your Song.

So the aim for the end of my Alice project is to have a finished dress with embroidery detail then to have a photo shoot of most likely me wearing the dress in Alice situations, in the woods, mazes, tea parties and such.

After seeing Ellie Goulding’s music video for your song it gave me an idea, what if I were to make a short video of perhaps the photo shoot. But just short little clips in the style of Goulding’s video which could then be projected onto a wall during the American Museum exhibition in May. I think that it could be a nice addition to the dress on the mannequin and photos from the photo shoot on the walls behind it.

So this is just an idea for now that I wanted to jot down before I forgot it!

The start of the Alice dress!

So this is the start of my 'Alice' dress.
Basically for my textiles project this year I'm going with the theme of fairytales and landed on Alice in Wonderland. I'm now going through a children's book of the tale and using the images on the book for inspiration for my own take on an Alice dress.
Now luckily enough when working on the Ben Hur project I made the dresses for the love interest Zena and these just happen to be the perfect shade of blue for an Alice dress! So there were two dresses for the production so I'm keeping one of them as a reference for the Zena character and then the second had to be distressed as part of the story and so I'm going to take this dress and customise it so that there's hopefully no more spray painted parts or any visible parts where it was attacked with a cheese grater as seen here! And then I'm going to use it as a canvas to show some of the embroidery techniques I've been and going to learn throughout the year. I may end up making another dress if I finish it quickly enough but this is enough to be getting on with for now!

So to start with I've chopped off some of the length from the sleeves and the skirt of the dress, I think it may get shorter but just slowly for now, I'd like for it to be around the knee in length with perhaps a petticoat underneath for some more volume. Next I'm going to do something about the neckline as there's been some distressing to it so I would like to cut it away but then I don't want to lose too much, for it to be to low cut as I want it to have the initial Alice feel and then when you look closer you will see more detailed embroidery.

So that's going to be my next step, I do need to remind myself to stop making so much Christmas joy and do some uni work but it's difficult at this time of year! So as long as I keep going with it I shall hopefully have the main body of the dress finished and ready for some more detail in the New Year!

Some more artwork embroidery

So I’ve now done a couple of pieces of just the outline, no extra fabric, just experimenting again with realistic colours then some brighter unusual colour combinations.

I think I actually prefer the brighter piece. When doing a few of these pieces I keep turning them over and actually thinking I quite like the effect of the sewing on the back, if the knots weren’t on the back. So I thought why not make a piece where the back is actually the front? This was confusing to do, even though I could draw a thick pen line on the fabric to then embroidery onto (Which I couldn’t in the others as the pen line would still be seen) which did make it easier however I kept having to turn over the piece to see if you could tell what I was meant to be. I don’t like messy work, sometimes on the back of some embroidery there’s thread chris-crossing everywhere and that’s not what I wanted, I was turning the back of a piece into the front yes, however this was intentional, it’s not I don’t like the back let’s just turn it over.

It still had to like similar to the original building in the end so I just made sure when doing corners of the small details like on the balcony, there was still a corner to go be, and then perhaps something cutting across the corner aswell so that it didn’t end up being to ‘precise’.

So I think that I do like the more abstractly feel to the un realistic colours so I’ve already done some smaller embroidery of things like letter boxes and the red telephone box but I think it would be interesting to do them again only in this style, using none life like colours and the back being the front.