Developing, Pockets and a Seam

I tried to come up with a catchier title but that was basically what we did this week rather than doing a week project. Last week we deconstructed/reconstructed a garment, at the beginning of this week we developed that garment idea. First we were told to draw what we had created from all angles. I used pencil and biro pen to draw my garment which I thinks looks really nice and defines the elements of my dress. The next step was to develop a small collection from our original garment we made. The elements of the dress that I kept was the frills, the piping (lines) and the black strip on the hem. I played around with the frilly strap, making it lager, having it go around one arm and changing the actual shape. I liked the defining feature of the lines so I added more of this detail to some of the pieces I designed. To develop my collection more I designed a playsuit which is really fun and cute. My favorite design is the one in the middle, because it uses two garments with the top layer being sheer. Another way of presenting my dress in my sketchbook was by collage. I had never done a collage for a garment before so I found this technique quite fun. I quite like how free and creative this looks, I may use it again in my sketchbooks.

After we had done that we looked at pockets which was interesting because that's something I hadn't been taught to do before. The first (top left) was pretty simple, it was a matter of cutting out a shape and stitching it down. The 2nd (bottom left) pocket had a flap which was trickier because I had to line the flap to finish it off. Rather that using the instructions I just looked at it and went along with what I thought I had to do and it worked very well. The last pocket I did was by far the trickiest. This one I had to plan on paper before I cut it out of calico. This one had a few folds and creases, making it fiddly to sew at times. For my first attempt I think I have done a very good job. The middle of the pocket opens up a bit so it would be interesting to see the effect of another fabric under it. We also learnt how to do a french seam which is a seam encased it another seam. This is used when using chiffon or any cheer fabric so the fabric doesn't fray and looks neater because you can see through it. This took a bit of time but it was easy to do. To finish off my sample I added some bias binding along the edge and this is to stop fraying and also give it a professional finish which I think looks nice.