This is my final garment fully finished :D
Please excuse the TV in the background, there was a program on about people that eat burgers, it made me hungry.
After a tough start to the project I am very happy with how it all turned out in the end.
I found it very difficult to get started and get inspiration as I was very unsure which direction to go down. After visiting the Castle Museum archives and the Thakary medical museum I knew that I wanted to incorporate the medical/injury element in to my work some how.
After looking in-depth at the details and information on the war, how people were treated and the things people were exposed to I knew that I wanted to to some how represent this pain and hidden messages in my final garment.
I did some work manipulating the fabrics using staining and wearing techniques which looked really good but when I experimented with water soluble fabric I realised that would be my main technique.
I wanted to do a full length dress, very simple with a good curvy silhouette.
I created an overlay fabric using 6 different materials shredded in to tiny pieces. I then sandwiched the pieces in to the dissolvable material. I had to sew over them over and over to make sure when the material was dissolved all the little scraps would remain in tact in a strong enough form to use and a new fabric in itself.
I did this 20 times to create enough to cover the majority of the garment.
I also found an image while at the Thakary Medical museum of a surgeon saving a venerable young woman from a skeleton (death). The shapes in the image were very eye catching so I decided to hand bead a spine to put down the back of the dress.
My finished garment is supposed to represent all the tiny pieces of the war, and how on their own they are very fragile but together they form a strong bond. Each piece of its on is normal but each is as important as the next.
After my ideas started to flow and I got my theory down on paper, this was when I started to feel a lot more comfortable with the project as a whole.
I think in the bringing i was looking to much at the historical side of the War and not the way it made me feel or the inspiration I could get from images and stories.
If I was to do this project again I think I would try not to worry to much about getting everything in to my sketch book and organically follow a path instead of trying to get as much down as possible.
I think that I handled my time really efficiently in this project, I kept to my timeline I laid out in my statement of intent and got everything finished to a standard I was really happy with.
I feel that given more time there isn’t anything extra I could of done to improve my work.
As I took Textiles a GCSE and A Level and then went on to study Buying and Merchandising I think i missed the practical side of design more than I knew I did.
There is a lot of texture and depth in my final piece which I am really happy with.
This is something I hope to be able to explore further in my career.
As I want to go in to bridal wear I feel I managed this project to my advantage using bridal fabrics, shapes and new ideas, keeping the concept fresh.
I feel that my foundation degree in Buying and Merchandising really helped my in the paper work side of the project as I have done similar things the past two years for other tasks, although getting to grips with photoshop again was a quite difficult but I got there in the end.
All in all I am very happy with how everything turned out and feel that I have worked to the best of my ability.
I have been updating my blog along side this project which can be found at;
http://ellasimpsonblog.blogspot.co.uk
