WEEK 1 - PRACTICE

The first week back and the deadline of the summer task offered an opportunity for us to reflect and consider the direction of our work for the Practice unit, whilst also getting a second opinion from our peers. I feel that the summer task has given me the direction needed to carefully consider the fundamental qualities of my final year practice. 

Following initial visual research undertaken in Amsterdam and New York, i have documented events and narratives concerning 'Pride', LGBT activism, and queer identities. As I learned from last year, drawing is the absolute essence of my practice, and there for essential to both my concept and process developement. Through hand-made sketchbooks and a mix of colourful mediums I feel I am successfully capturing the energy needed for this project, although I know I must develop a lot more illustrations to resolve my ideas.

'Concept' board from the summer task, detailing the direction of my practice this year.

Continuing on from the live brief I undertook for Touchstones Rochdale in the Locating unit, I am in full swing of production of a final costume garment for the exhibition in October. Contact with the gallery has been essential, and I'm enjoying the engagement with an event outside of the MSOA campus. An external deadline has been exactly the push I needed to get a running start at this year. 

Second toile, using a raised natural cotton to imitate the fell for cotton velvet. I have a lot to work on to make the over-all feel of the garment more contemporary and visually exciting.  

Following my PDP tutorial with Mark, we both agree that it would work in my favour to have both projects run simultaneously until the two tutor review, but to focus mostly on the Rochdale project. The making of a final piece is helping me realise the processes I intend to employ this year, and is giving me a greater understanding of the potential 'costume' can play within this context. 

Pattern cutting is something I have intentionally avoided for the past 2 years, and I am surprising myself at how much I'm learning by forcing myself to realise my designs into a 3D form. As I develop the shape of the garment, I am understand the potential of embroidery and print placement, which will be the true teller of the narratives I have created for the exhibition.  

Fashion/Costume illustration to develop print and embroidery ideas. I want the piece to read as a collage of collective and personal narratives. 

Cuckoo Evaluation

As I had predicted the Cuckoo project has been a difficult challenge, but an exhilarating and satisfying collaboration. The final costume is pleasing overall and I feel in strongly captures and showcases elements of 3 individual creatives' practices. Working with Tess and Zsofi has been fantastic, I am so glad to finally experience a true collaboration within Unit X, in which each of us were able to bring a different aesthetic, specialism, and perspective to the table and through mutual compromise, understanding and developing of each others work we garnished a strong identity for the 'Cuckoo' character. It has been extremely insightful to the potential of collaborative efforts and to the expectations of working within a 'costume'-context. 

Unit X Exhibition

I have had to consider a lot further in this project, both in terms of producing embroidery and print for general garment construction, and for a theatre-context. I feel more informed about the potential of embroidery for costume/set and also reiterates my interest in costume within an installation context, which is something I fully intend to explore further in my level 6 projects, and in upcoming projects/exhibitions I partake in (Rochdale costume exhibition).

Cuckoo photoshoot

To conclude the Cuckoo project Tess and myself organised a group photo shoot this week on location at Ordsall Hall. Failing finding a photographer due to course deadlines, I took the photos. This is a fantastic realisation of all our hard-work pulled off, and all the outfits together looked phenomenal. This last collaborative effort from Tess and I was a good move, but given more time and a surplus of photographers we would have loved to spend longer perfecting the shoot, but these are all things to consider for portfolio. 

coloured thread on white organza, sample with most potential for other avenues.

Working towards an end goal within a limit time-frame has been stressful, but exciting and motivational. I have enjoyed having to work within certain limitations; deciding to develop 1 main embroidery design and allowing it to grow quickly, and considerations of compromise in fabric selection and process have all been beneficial to my creative practice. The lack of time to develop samples as thoroughly as I have in previous projects has meant I did not explore a variety of processes, but I feel the necessity of simplicity has enabled me to learn other skills and ways of thinking. The satisfaction of seeing my textile work culminate in a final garment is incredible and a nice refreshing change to final samples usually produced in other projects. Given more time, I would obviously have loved to explore other avenues, and developed more of a narrative through illustration, but I am happy with what we have achieved. 

Refinement Week 6 & 7

As a textiles student it is easy to get carried away with fabric exploration, but when you must consider things from a fashion/garment construction perspective you must consider the difficulties of working with some fabrics. From discussions with the group, we have decided against various layers of embroidered silk organza on the trousers due to difficulties constructing with so much sheer. We considered using the same silk/viscose velvet, but worried incase it resembled a 'velour tracksuit' due to the sports wear elements of the waist. We decided to use a (more expensive) cotton velvet instead to give a more luxurious and tailored feel. 

trouser toile with embroidery placement ideas.

We have considered as a group the placement of the embroidery on the trousers, playing with scale and layering. Here we visualised ideas pinning samples to the trousers; this has been very informative to me as an embroidery student, expanding from the limited view of just a sample, and onto the larger context of actual clothing.

disaster with the tree embroidery

There is a lot to consider when stitching out with the multi-head on actual garment pattern pieces such as design placement, but also not crushing the velvet with the frame. As Lucia had suggested, Tess and I both began developing an embroidered tree design on the right leg of the trousers on the Bernina, but disaster struck, and the drawing on the water-soluable fabric on top got stitched into the fibres of the fabric. As we had no time to reattempt this, I added another ethos design to the leg, and instead echoed the tree design through the costume using flock print and devore. Quick decision making was key, and I see this as fundamental in the design/make process.

'cuckoo figure' white thread, on white cotton velvet.

layering of off-white thread and coloured design on top, creating the sense of a frantic narrative.

Refinement Week 5

This week has been an intense one as most of us had the CP2 deadline to complete; my work has lost a tiny bit of momentum this week, but is all a learning curve in managing tasks and finding a balance between responsibilities, especially approaching final year and CP3. 

Final line-up selection with Tess and Zsofi.

Selection of colour palette, most potential samples, and a rough final line-up were made, in a collective decision from Zsofi, Tess and myself. I feel we are working strongly as a team, and everything is fitting in to place. Meeting with Lucia, the director of the Cuckoo performance at the start of the week was a tiring but extremely insightful experience. Getting the opinion of someone not only without a design background, but the director with her own personal expectations and performance know-how has been imperative. She felt strongly about the costumes working as a "collective unit", which is crucial for the cohesiveness of the stage. The possibility of each of the groups incorporating an element of 'the tree' was agreed, and we have much to consider in terms of the performers movement and the possibility of the costume "distracting" from the overall performance. This is new uncharted territory for us as Textile/Fashion designers, and is a context loaded with many considerations.

Meeting with the director, insightful collaborative effort from all groups. 

   

Red on red multi-head, very pleased with this sample.

Development - Week 4

Following some advice I got from a conversation with Jane McKetting after a lecture of hers last semester, I intend to draw out all of the potential of my original 'Orphan' illustration and ethos design. Due to the time constraints of this ambitious project, I must be conscious of time management with sample development and I think continually reproducing the same design design, but with alterations in thread choice, fabric, scale and placement is most realistic for this collaboration, and more fitting to industry expectations. 

coloured mulit-head on white organza

 I am happy with the development of colour into the design, although the stitches are quite small still and therefore the illustrative detail gets lost, I intend to enlarge the design and simplify to reduce stitch count; layering of simpler designs could be much more effective.

gold multi-head on wine red dyed velvet 

White on white organza.

Going against what I feel most comfortable with (an explosion of colour) I explored the possibilities of a stripped back design, enlarged, using only white thread on white organza. This is completely different to my usual work and I am extremely pleased with the serene simplicity of the design. In discussion with the group we all feel this is a step in the right direction as it adds a narrative detail, without making the garment too busy. The layering potential of this sample is also exciting.

colour/fabric swatch 

We have also began underpinning a colour/fabric swatch selection. Developed mostly by my work in the dye lab to achieve the truest colours to our research I feel this selection captures our aesthetic effectively.

Development Week 3

Continuing from the ground work made in the past week, I have further explored through illustration with intent of developing on the multi-head.

Cuckoo / folk inspired illustration. I am fascinated by the idea of the displaced child. 

I am strongly influenced by Russian fairytales, and this is physically manifested in the samples produced on the multi-head; sticking to a single colour thread at first to perfect the digital design, the simplicity of a red or yellow line lends itself to the Russian aesthetic. From this initial Ethos session I intend to enlarge the design, and add more layers of colour to give the samples more depth. 

yellow multi-head embroidery on dyed silk organza, I like the translucent quality of the silk. 

red multi-head embroidery on dyed yellow velvet.

Following Sarah's advice to cross-pollenate our work, taking one of Zsofi's drawings I developed it through to the lazer cutter. By using dyed velvet, a continuous element in my work we cut out a grid design based on the tudor architecture of Ordsal Hall. I'm pleased with this work as an initial sample, it creates an interesting presence when layered, but as a group will we have to underpin just how it can be used.

lazer cut samples, developed by myself, inspired by Zsofi's drawing research at Ordsall Hall.

Cuckoo: Initial Research

Due to a study trip to NYC on the first week of Unit X, I didn't meet my group until a week after everyone else, which I was worried would be detrimental to my own work and that of the collaboration but, full of ideas we each began generating work following similar themes and aesthetic. Due to the short nature of unit x, and the size of our group, I feel we are definitly taking on the most ambitious Unit X project, which I find both intimating and exhilarating.  Already I have noticed the difference in pace of this project, and working alongside the structure that fashion students are familiar with, this project will be a valuable insight. Things I have began to consider with initial thoughts of Cuckoo are the obvious limitations we will face, I am aware that unlike our usual Textiles in Practice projects were the whole project is sample development, I will have limited time to develop and refine my samples it will then be used in a fashion/costume context. 

generic garment draping

Our first collaborative effort as a group was the draping of some generic garments; a dress, a lace blouse, a corset and a tan military jacket were compiled to generate interesting silhouettes for us to begin developing designs upon. Although this is totally different to my way of working within textiles, it was very informative in terms of shape and the particular contrast in textures has got me thinking about potential material qualities to explore.  

Cuckoo research mood board. I particularly enjoy this method of processing and analysing interests of research.

My initial research has been based in the realm of folklore and fairytale, Russian tradition, referencing the Russian heritage of the Cuckoo character. As a group we all love the idea of a Russian folk aesthetic. In response to this I have experimented with illustrative elements to convey a graphic narrative, although I intend to develop this further.
As a group, we feel my illustrative narratives could become a main element in the costume to be developed through embroidery and possibly print.

Cuckoo illustration, playing on my strong graphic hand developed in the Locations project. I am excited to develop this on the multi-head.

Cuckoo muse development, using my illustrative style to further establish an over-arching aesthetic.