The 60s Dress Project - Part 1

Every Wednesday at college there is a pattern cutting lesson. During those lessons we are learning how to manufacture four different types of dresses.  The first dress is a 60s styled dress.

 

 

The first thing I did was make a dress bock. This is the basic shape which I start off with for every dress. This is traced on to pattern paper, ready for me to make adaptions. After drawing around the outside the dress block I drew in the darts and the labels. This is my first draft of the pattern.

 

The dress we were making was loose fitting whereas the dress block was semi-fitted. I adjusted this by making the sides straight the sides. This was done by lining our set square with the hip line and draw the line straight up to the arm hole. This was done on both the back and front of the  dress.

 

 

The next thing I did was decide the length of my dresss. I drew down from the hip line to the lenght I wanted and  squared off. I then marked on the pattern where the I wanted the pleats. They had to be 2cm apart; this made the pleats equal.

 

 

For his 60's style dress I had to move the dart which was quite simple to do. From the end of the original dart, I drew another line in the place where we wanted the new dart to be placed. It was best to place the dart a bit away from the arm hole. This stops it from becoming bulky.

 

Once this was finished I got another piece of paper and traced out the 1st draft (front and back). After this I cut along the new dart line on the traced version. I then folded over it over so you couldn;t see the orignal dart anymore.

 

I needed to cancel out the back dart. This was done by measuring the shoulder lenght on the block. From this measurment I needed to canel out 1cm from the arm hole corner. Then I joined the arm whole with shoulder using my set square. I scribbeled out the dart as it was no longer needed.

 

The next thing I did was place the lined patch pocket. Under the hip line is were I placed it. I drew a square to the size I wanted the pocket and then curved the botom corners.

 

I then created a final pattern for the pocket by tracing it out on another piece of paper. I then drew in a 1cm seam allowence around the outline and placed a gran line.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Knitting Workshop

Yesterday we had someone come it to college to teach us how to knit. I struggled to cast on and it took someone to show about ten times before I got the hang of it.  To start of with we knitted with wool which I will admit my wool sample had a couple of holes in and it wasn't exactly straight.  After that we had to knit with something alternative. I chose lace. This was difficult because there was no stretch in the lace. I also knitted with fabric and different wool. 

Manipulating Fabric Workshop

I have completed another workshop. This one was about manipulating fabric. I found it OK and managed to try a two different ways of manipulating fabric.

This technique is called furrowing.


Placing this sample on the mannequin gave me the idea to use it on the shoulder of a garment. This would bring attention to this area.

I created another furrowing sample with a patterned fabric. I thought this would look quite nice as a strap on a garment.

Another technique I tried was pleats.

 

My Paintings

I like to paint in my spare time. Here are some of the paintings I have completed. I would say most of my work is abstract because that is the style I most enjoy painting in. If you would like to see more of my work here is a link to my Deviantart page http://bexter18.deviantart.com/ .

 

 

  

Observational Drawings

 I did some more observational drawings in my sketch book. I am going to use these as inspiration for my samples I make in the textile workshops.

 

Hand Embroidery

 I did some hand embroidery over the Christmas holidays. I quite enjoyed the embroidery and found it to be addictive.

To start of with I embroidered some of the scrape fabric I printed. I produced more hand embroidery samples and took the inspiration from a mosaic I found in Liverpool.

 

Printing Workshop

As I have mentioned in a previous post I have to take part in a few textile workshops for my current brief. The next workshop was printing. During this workshop I was given the idea to my own fabric for a dress I was currently making in my pattern cutting lessons. I did this using lino printing.

I also tried other types of printing during the workshop such as stamp, mono printing and potato printing.

I experimented withe the stamps at first to see the marks each one made. Then I tried to use the stamps to recreate one of my observational drawings.

The type of printing I tried was the mono print. this is were you roll paint on to acetate which is taped to the paper which you want your print on. You then tape a photocopy of the image you want to print on top of the acetate. Then you trace the image with a pencil or pen. After you have done this, you should a print of the image on the paper when you lift up the acetate.

The potato printing was not very succesful because it was difficult to carve your shape into the potato and i mostly turned to mush.

My lino print was very sucseful beacuse I chose a simple design and I took my time when making the print.