lizzyvbrowndesignblog-blog

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Week 3 Thursday:

Success!! I received an email from Ponoko in the morning and my design was verified! Hopefully if everything goes smoothly, they’ll make it by the end of today fingers crossed.

Not too long after the confirmation email verifying my design, I received another stating that the design had been made and ready for pick up, and I really loved the way they came out! Even though I forgot that only one side could be engraved leaving the other one with just an outline of the frame, I took this into consideration when Appling the earring hoops on so that the design would be facing outward if you were wearing the earrings.

Overall I’ve learnt so much throughout this paper and It wouldn’t have been possible to create all these wearable outcomes if it wasn’t for my lecturers; Sue and Faith and for the amazing technical help from everyone from the Fablab team. For a person, such as myself, who’s never made anything wearable in my life, I learnt A LOT of firsts these past three weeks and always surprised myself with what I made and how got around obstacles. Not only has this challenged the way I’m able to learn and create within a compressed timespan but it’s also brought forth key ideas for me to actually take going forwards into my own clothing, such as how I should be aware of how I purchase items, what can I do as a creator to handle wastage better for the sustainability for the future industries and the environment. Continuing going forward, Since open source resources online gave me so much advice and instruction on how I to create some of my pieces I thought it was only fair that I gave back a little knowledge about what I learnt and what the process was when I was creating one of my designs. So, I went back onto fabricademy from week 1, an opensource for OS-circular fashion website, and uploaded how I created my laser cut earrings. Here’s the link: 

https://oscircularfashion.herokuapp.com/project/-LSTDxHRvzWnVOW0HXtR

Also making the file downloadable so many others can possibly go to their nearest laser cutting store and make some of these festive decorations/earrings as well!

Thanks to everyone for their help and support and have a great Christmas!

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Week 3 Wednesday:

Thankfully they got back to me fairly early in the morning, so I got cracking on my design as soon as I got to uni, apparently I had an upload error because it was caused by ‘appearances’ on my design/paths that messed with the files colour settings. So after I went back and deleted all the appearances and did a little bit of clean up I finally managed to upload my design to the site. I then input all my measurements and what material I wanted (plywood beech) paid a fee so I could get it made fairly quickly and ordered it.

Sadly I got an email back a few hours after I put my order through saying that I had a lot of double paths overlapping each other and unless I changed my design I couldn’t get it made. The reason as to why they couldn’t print it with overlapping lines is because the laser will go over that spot twice burning the design and possibly harming the machine itself. So I went back and fixed the design for them and sent the new one through. I only managed to send them through the design a little after 2pm and sadly they close at 2 so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get them made or for another response on my design.

But I tweeked my design to flip the colours around because fablab’s laser cutters are red for cutting and blue for engraving whereas it’s vies versa for Ponoko, I also had to change all my paths to a stroke of 0.01mm for ponoko’s cutter as well as downloading their template for the correct Size I wasn’t to put my design. The picture below is the new design. But the annotations around the template are the instructions for how to organise the file to ponoko’s requirements.

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Week 3 Tuesday:

Today we got introduced to our final machine to help us with our digital fabrication and in my groups case we were shown how to use the laser cutter. Thankfully the machine only took illustrator files so testing out my design didn’t take too long. Although I intend to laser cut plywood I decided that testing out the machine and the design onto a scrap piece of fabric of mine would be ideal. With the help of Leo, we managed to find the suitable specifics for the machine to cut through my type of test fabric which was a soft denim.

Once Leo suggested that I tape the fabric down to the machine and showed me how to put the print through we managed to cut it.

I really loved how these came out for my first try but stated by Leo I accidently duplicated paths and overlapped them, this caused some engraving lines to get burnt a little bit and on the top design the tail of the bird is partly cut which wasn’t intended. So I went back to the computer to fix up those problems but also to adjust the colours of some paths as I wanted more shapes to be cut out of the design.

Unfortunately, once I had finished touching up my design the laser cutter was fully booked up until Wednesday next week. I didn’t expect this to be the case as I didn’t take into accord the students that hadn’t finished their previous designs with the laser cutter from the weeks before instead of it just being the people from my group this week. Since I really didn’t want to be waiting to use the Fablab’s laser cutter until next week I decided to source another place that could do it for me outside of uni. And surprisingly enough there’s a laser cutting outpost right outside the war memorial called Ponoko.

The thing I found interesting about Ponoko though is that instead of the customer bringing in their files to the store, they require you to go online, login and follow a step by step process to guide you how they require your file, what sizes, and what material you can choose from to make your design.

I tried my best to follow their instructions but when I went to upload my design apparently, I had red fills that were restricting me to upload it since ponoko only requires black fills if you are rastering. But In my case, I checked all my layers and couldn’t find anything with a fill. Thankfully while uploading and failing they said I could email my design to them to see if someone could help. So, I called it a day and sent through my design so I could work on it again tomorrow.

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Week 3 Monday:

Instead of a lecture today like usual Sue and Faith kindly allowed everyone to have a free catch up lesson for those who needed a little time to update their blog or either continue working on their garments. Thankfully since I’d put the time into making sure I’m roughly always up to date, I had a free lesson to work on what I wanted to create for this week. I knew that I’ll be working on the laser cutting this week, so I decided to make something that wouldn’t require too much time since we only have 3 or so days to finish it. I’ve seen how detailed and intricate the laser cutter can cut things out of material including wood, so I decided to create something festive around that. I thought that a modular piece would be perfect, as a pair of earrings would be great as a festive garment piece that ideally wouldn’t take too much time and since I know my mum is a fanatic about Christmas decorations, I thought it would be adorable if I could easily switch out the earring hoops and turn it into a Christmas tree ornament. After consoling with what my mum would be interested in, I decided to incorporate the British and kiwiana 12 days of Christmas song into the design. The partridge and a pear tree, and for the kiwiana version, a Pukeko in a ponga tree. One for each ear. So after approving on the idea I then decided to roughly sketch out what I’d want them to look like into my workbook. Since I wanted them to double up as Christmas tree ornaments, I decided that it would be a fun idea to put the design itself into a Christmas ball frame with a bow.

I wasn’t too sure what software the laser cutter use, but I decided that everything in fablab is roughly oriented around illustrator, so I decided to create my design today and then hopefully I can get down to cutting tomorrow without any hassle.

Since I’m basing this weeks theme around modular clothing I decided to do a bit more research into the origins and to get some more details around it because since the beginning of this paper I’ve heard a lot about it but haven’t fully explored its meaning.

Modular clothing research:

From what I’ve looked at online modular clothing can date but to the 1980’s when one of the greatest modular clothing brands, Mulitples, designed by Sandra Garratt, really brought the use of multiple function clothing onto the table. From the different clothing pieces you bought from this brand; shirt, pants, dresses, belts etc. you could create  a number of outfits from the pieces. Sandra Garette explains her brand as "Heightened individuality through apparent uniformity."

http://gothamist.com/2016/04/25/sandra_garratt_modular_multiples_1980s_fashion.php#photo-1

Modular Clothing today, has come so far due to technology to the point where modular clothing is not just restricted on wearing multiple pieces but wearing pieces where they can transform into another garment itself. Also a big part in modular clothing today is Zero-waste clothing, where the designer will take every part of their material and make sure it is included in the piece, this is beneficial to the environment and instead of wasting materials that then possibly pollute the environment the designer will have to make sure aware of what they’re using and how much of it they’re taking off. Designer Yoehlee Teng is a good example of this as she abides by the zero waste rule thoroughly.

All in all I don’t think I’d be able to create my modular piece to be zero waste easily but I still want to try and see how I can try my best to involve the idea into my work this up coming week.

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Week 2 Friday – Sunday:

Throughout Friday to Sunday I’ve just been cracking away on physically creating my remake style cap. On Friday I went to fablab to finish my digitally embroidered pieces including my heart patch and flower pattern on my denim. Thankfully since I arrived once the doors opened, I managed to start stitching my design since I was the first one there. Once I started to sew though I had to make sure that the needle didn’t go over my previously sewn on leaves as I accidently made the spacing between the threading too small, the reason as to why I had to make sure that I didn’t go over it was because last time that happened the embroidery machine broke and we had to take it apart to fix it. Even though Craig gave us the all clear to go use it, I was still paranoid and wanted to be careful.

In my original flower design, I had heads for the flowers and small little red hearts around the outside but after the sewing machine incident I decided against it and just figured that If I had embroidered the details myself it would be a lot safer.

After I had finally finished the flower pattern, I then moved on to adding the circle design around the heart patch. Initially I had planned for the whole circle to be filled in but then as I was using the machine I could see the denim was becoming bunched up in the middle so instead I stopped it a little more after halfway done so instead of being a filled out circle it become a halo.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to finish my final text design ‘Back to front’ due to a lot of people waiting for the embroidery machine and I had an appointment shortly that day as well, so I decided to call it a day at the fablab and head on home to cut and put everything together. While hand embroidering the flowers, I realised It would look decent to add a halo lines with the left over yellow embroidery thread as I thought it make the patch pop a bit.

I think later that evening decided to create the panels from my old denim jeans using my old cap as a reference. I did this pinning that red cap parts to the denim and outlining them in chalk. I also didn’t have any fabric scissors, so I braved it using the sharpest pair of regular scissors I could find at my flat and it ended up working better than I thought, I just had to sacrifice making the cuts perfectly straight.  I also decided that it would be interesting and give the hat more character If I outlined the back parts of the hat onto the pocket section of the jeans as the colouring was different, and then also decided to make the side panels the embroidered parts of my jeans.

The Creation:

There was a lot of trail an error with how I planned to construct the hat as I wasn’t very confident in my sewing abilities, so because of the lack of time I new I would have over the weekend I decided to hot glue gun all the pieces together. I wasn’t too hopeful before I started as a hat seems to need fairly strong seems to actually be put on a person for a snug fit usually, but once I started to glue the first two panels together I felt that I was going to work out alright. After all the parts were glued together I decided to that the heart should just be a patch on the front as if I were to have included it into the denim panels when I was cutting out parts I ran the risk of getting the measurements off and excluding the patch from the front panels. So instead I decided to cut it out individually and apply it onto the hat after it was fully constructed.

In the end I was really proud of how It turned out since I’ve never really made a wearable piece before that required separate templates to be put together. Even if it was created using a hot glue gun, I managed to put it on without any implications which I found great. And I really feel that the hat fell into the vintage remake style that I talked about earlier because throughout my whole process I was constantly thinking of ways that I could uniquely combine two old pieces of mine (the pair of jeans and old cap) into something new and interesting and that’s what this style is about bringing a variety of pieces together to create something completely different

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Week 2 Thursday:

Today we started off with completing our tutorial from last Thursday’s session with Craig about 3D printing. I already had a save I was happy with to print, but then for those who didn’t, we we’re all introduced to an open source website called thingiverse were designers share their projects online with their own type of licenses. This was new to me as I didn’t realise that every creator can have different licenses on opensource websites, I thought it was just under the platform’s rules and regulations. But on thingiverse there is a wide variety of licenses, from not being able to profit off their creations to not being able to modify it in any way. I found this great to know as I wouldn’t have seen the licences section on the website without Craig telling me, and it’s a super useful tool for artists trying to show their work online but being able to safely get the credit they deserve.

Next I put my 3D model into Autodesk Netfab, too make sure there was no geometric errors as well as to check the physical size of the object was accurate.

Since Everything looked fine in Netfab I switched over into Cura, a Slicing software which can convert a STL file into a Gcode file for the 3D printers to read. While In Cura I also adjusted the height of the flower object slightly and duplicated a few of them with different sizes to see how that would result. While in Cura, Craig also taught a few of the options that we could tweek on the right hand side and talked about all their different functions.

Once I had saved the project as a Gcode file I decided that instead of printing just as it was, I wanted to experiment and print onto some fabric pieces as I’ve been interested to print a design onto fabric to see the outcome and to see if it could possibly be something I wanted to incorporate into my next garment. Even though I forgot to take off the retraction while I was in Cura, I still feel like the flowers came out quite nicely on the fabric and it was super simple to apply.

After my team weekly discussion with Sue and Faith I went back to the Fablab to start transferring my SVG files onto inkscape ready to be put into the embroidery machine. Unfortunely the files took me longer to adjust than I thought as a lot of errors were coming up because I had a very detailed flower pattern design with a few different colours onto it. Also my font wasn’t recognisable for any of the softwares at uni so I couldn’t transform it into a vector file so I had to make do with the default fonts on inkscape.

In the end I didn’t have a lot of time to use the embroidery machine because there was a line to use it once I had finally finished fixing all my design files. But once I got my hands onto it I managed to sew on the leaves from the pattern itself until the machine semi-malfunctioned and Craig had to take the machine apart to trouble shoot it.

It also turned out that I had adjusted the spacing between the stiches too finely, and this was what may have been what caused the malfunction with the machine. So while Craig was so nicely helping us fix the machine I went back to fix my files to make sure all the rest of my stiches were nicely spaced out. I also had a little bit of time to patch a piece of my old cap onto my jeans with the domestic sewing machine, this turned out fairly nicely I thought, and once the Fablab had closed I went back home to hand embroid a little bit of the line work in and around it for some extra detail.

Tomorrow I aim to get up at the crack of dawn in order to complete all of my machine embroidery, fingers crossed!

Research about my correlation with how my piece acts with a consumer:

While on my journey creating this hat, I remembered that there is a type of specific current street fashion today in Tokyo called the vintage remake style, where people like to take pieces of clothing and cut it up and add things onto it, so it’s a very one of a kind style.  Where the general vibe is bringing together incongruous pieces into one garment to make something completely new, usually with a new shape as well.

I think the beauty that lies with this style is that there is no end to a piece, everything is timeless. If you want a particular section of one garment on another you can just take it off and sew it on. Everything that you collect or already have can be made into a brand new piece of clothing. Not only that but everything is experimental there’s no boundaries on what piece of fabric goes where it’s completely unique and customisable. This is definitely the way I’d like to go with creating my re-engineered hat.

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Week 2 Wednesday:

Today I reversed engineered the cap as I wanted to use it as a template, so I could recreate it with my denim. I also deconstructed one of my leg’s so I could have enough fabric for the hat. And once I had the independent pieces from the red hat, I made a chalk outline onto the denim.

Once I had finished outlining the templates, I decided not cut them out just yet, because when I transfer them onto the digital embroidery hoop it helps if there is a little more fabric to grab onto, so I’ll save cutting them out until after I’ve finished embroidering them. Unsure as to what I wanted to embriod onto my hat, I drew a few sketch up’s. I knew that having an intricate detailed design wouldn’t be practical as it would take a longer time to create on the machine as well as having multiple colours would be unpractical because I’d need to change the colour of the thread by hand every time I were to change it. So I kept the colour palette to a minimum and simple. In the end I thought it would be cool to explore sewing the old onto the new cap hence the heart illustration but then explore the types of stitching techniques which is what the concentric circles are for around it. I also wanted to see how text would come out on the machine, so I thought of the line ‘back 2 front’.

As I didn’t have illustrator at home, I decided to create the designs on photoshop and save them as individual vector masks as a photoshop EPS file. There were three in total; the concentric circles for the heart patch, the daisy design for the sides of the hat and then the ‘Back 2 Front’ text to arch over the back of the cap.

Tomorrow after class I aim to start to embroid my designs after transferring my designs onto illustrator and then transfer them onto the denim pieces and hopefully attempt to sew everything together once completed. After seeing how the machine took to sewing onto the denim pocket from Tuesday, I have high hopes.

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Week 2 Tuesday digital embroidery:

Today I finally got to learn about how to use the digital embroidery machine, and even though I was slightly imitated given that my sewing abilities aren’t the strongest I still thoroughly enjoyed it. First we were given a quick run down by Harry, an intern working at Fablab doing industrial design at Massey, who introduced us on how to work on the embroidery’s software Inksketch. At first I wasn’t too sure what to make of it since it required us to log onto ubuntu which is a completely new operating system, much like that of windows 10 or MAC. But after we had gotten the project folder set up and got the software running is was fairly user friendly. It was fairly standard and only required vector-based paths, much like of Illustrator, which Harry said is a great way to actually design the pattern you’re after and then you could just save it as a SVG file and transfer it to ink sketch no problem.

After we came up with a basic pattern, in inksketch Hannah demonstrated the types of hoops they use for the machine and what backing fabric she prefers to use depending on what you’re wanting to sew on. For my example they brought up some loose scrap denim and back it with some black canvas material. Which is similar to that of Countdown’s reusable bags, so the embroidery pattern can come out clearer.

After the embroidery machine demonstration, Hannah showed us how it was possible to freehand embriod with your standard domestic sewing machine. Even though this wouldn’t count for digital fabrication it was still super helpful for me just as a recap. But also, I realised it would be a good idea to sew on one of my old denim pockets from the reverse engineering exercise back in week 1, as I want to create a hat with my old denim, but also wanted to test out how the embroidery machine would take my denim material.

So, after I sewed on the pocket to the same piece of fabric, I went straight to illustrator to then create an interesting pattern for myself. And in creating the design I kept in mind that I wanted to learn how to change the colours onto the embroidery machine, so I made things different colours whilst once I transferred the SVG file from illustrator onto inksketch, I wanted to change each path into a unique line such as a; dash line, satin stitch, running line etc. Once I had changed all the path lines into the type of stitches, I wanted I converted the file into a DTS file and transferred it onto a memory stick so that the printer could read off of it.

While I started to print the design onto the denim fabric, I wasn’t too hopeful as the denim pocket I had sewed on barley managed to fit underneath the footer, but surprisingly even when the machine sewed over the pocket it managed to do it beautifully. This was great as it told me in my upcoming garment, I could even use the embroidery machine to sew parts together.

The next step for me after my testing today was to try and find an old hat were, I thought I could reverse engineer to figure out the panel shapes for a hat and transfer those panel pieces onto my old denim, so I can recreate the hat into something new and potentially combined. Whilst also trying to embroid pieces onto it. Below I have just taken some reference pictures so that I can come back and try to re-stitch it when it comes back to creating the hat with my denim.

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Week 2 Monday:

During class, after explaining our first garment piece to the class, I chose to take part in the Accumark workshop. Accumark has an pattern design program which has been a reliable system for designers which ensures a high  and precise measurements and patterns. For the exercise we went back to our zero wastage exercise last Thursday that we did and sketched up our basic paper template.

Once we had finished our sketch up, Jess, showed us how to transfer our Accumark file onto the paper cutters? that were fairly similar to that of a vinyl cutter as they both had the roller mechanism for scrolling through paper in order to cut it in certain places. She showed us this technique on both the older more interactive model and the newer model which required less interaction.

I really enjoyed this lesson even though I wasn’t too sure if I’d be using this technique it was interesting to learn another software and have a little more insight on where this project could potentially take me.

After the day’s session was over, I went back to the Fablab to see what my printed bracelet looked like compared to the one I printed at the library and SUCCESS! It looked a lot cleaner and didn’t look so flimsy to take the supports off. I’ll make sure to be a lot more careful when taking off the assess parts this time and will look for better and more effective tools hopefully so that it won’t break.

Even though the fablab’s bracelet looked a whole lot better than the library’s print I still decided to print out the other model I created to see what might happen just in case the bracelet breaks yet again when I tried to take the supports off the model above. So I went back to autodesk Netfabb and checked if there were any errors with the new model before I converted to Cura for a Gcode. Nicely enough there weren’t any errors so I then proceeded to put the STL file into Cura and made a Gcode file ready to put onto my SD card for the printer.

Thankfully since my last occurrence at fablab with the faulty machine, I knew which one worked best for me so I chucked the SD card into the same one and started to print and the base looked good so I decided to let it run and do it’s thing this time the total wait time was 2 hours and 33 mins and used up 42 grams of filament. And the finished print is the image below.

After I cut and sandpapered down the rough edges, I finally finished my first garment the abstract 3D printed armband. I thought about painting the band gold, but for atheistic sake I’m considering leaving it for now and try to create my other garments before I decide to paint it, just so I could be possibly coherent with the colours.

As for the armband I printed today I also sanded that one down too. They both came out nicely but after sanding them both down and trying them both on I would say I like the feel and weight of the thinner bracelet myself as it was easier to wear and required less grams of filament to make while still being effective. The thicker bracelet however, I imagine would be a better fit for others printing on machines in their local areas that aren’t that strong. If I were to print the thicker bracelet at the library, I believe it wouldn’t have broken while I took the supports off since the printed bracelet itself is a lot stronger and requires less support.

Since I know that I’m doing digital embroidery tomorrow I decided that doing a little prior research would be good as I’d love to incorporate into my next garment piece.

So since I had a lot of extra left over material from the reverse engineering exercise on day 1, I decided to have a little look around for an old cap and add my left over denim pieces for the head panels of the cap and then try to digitally embroid some details onto it tomorrow or test out a few details on scrap pieces tomorrow as a test.

Some questions tomorrow I’ll have to ask is if the embroidery machine even work’s on denim, what do we have to do if we want different colours for the design; is that even a function?, do we have to provide special embroidery hoops if it’s for a small and intricate design?

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Week 1 Sunday:

Unfortunately the library was closed and so was Fablab, so I attempted as best as I could to glue the bracelet back together again for something to demonstrate for Monday’s class.

But while thinking about the philosophical side of this project I thought to myself that 3D printing is so great and so easily assessable for people, like myself, that have no idea how to sew but once you’ve learned the fundamentals of how to use a computer you can create anything that comes to mind, not just clothing. It’s also great because you don’t necessarily have to be good at 3D modelling since there are hundreds of projects online where the owners give their project to the public so they can download it and can potentially create it themselves. Not to mention that even though the fab lab here in wellington was closed, all I did was search up where else I could use a 3D printer in my area. Funnily enough that’s how I stumbled upon knowing that the national library in CBD (which is a 20 minute walk away from where I live) were able to 3D print publics STL files given on a memory stick. I Love to think that maybe one day this is how everyone will create, not just clothes but tools and infrastructure, just by the touch of a button.  I believe 3D printing is now but in the future why not develop it into 4D printing? 4D meaning that instead of us telling a machine to print what we have digitally made, why not tell the machine to tell another object to react to another to create something even more dimensional. Scion scientist, Florian Graichen, says that 4D printing involves using “materials that respond to pressure, light, any type of external stimuli so you’re not set into just one shape or one form. – printing with responsive material.”

https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/2018661042/3d-printing-the-future-is-4d

With further development on 3D technology who knows what might happen?

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Week 1 Saturday:

I knew my chances were slim for the fablab to be open on a Saturday but I went to go check on it regardless just in case I could access the room with my swipe card. Unfortunately, it was locked which is understandable, so I decided to try my luck at the national library for 3D printing as I decided it would be best to see a functional prototype before the demonstration on Monday.

With the help of Sharon, the 3D printer technician at the library, we started to print the bracelet on their Up 3D printers. The end result took one and a half hours and used 17 grams of filament. While chatting to Sharon I also found out that the 2 printers they had were secondhand. 

Seeing the completed 3D print I felt confident, but it wasn’t until I picked it up that I realised that it might be tricky to cut out the supports without the bracelet itself breaking as it seemed a little fragile.

Since I didn’t have a set of pliers on me I decided to make do with a pair of scissors and a crafting Knife while also trying to be as carful as possible. Regardless, the bracelet wasn’t strong enough and broke as I tried to take the supports off. So I went back to the model in fusion to adjust the width of the circles as they proved to be the most flimsy and fragile. The new model is the image below.

Tomorrow I’ll attempt to print out the new model from the library and try to burrow a set of pliers. Hopefully the added thickness to the circles will create more stability when I’m cutting away at the supports. As for the excess bits of PLA material after the cuttings I aim to return it to Fablab as they have a box for PLA waste. I’ll double check with Craig but I hope that they have a filament recycler which can re-heat the filament waste and turn it into reusable filament again.

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Week 1 Friday:

Today I headed out to the fablab to start my printing process for the bracelet. I knew that I had my 3D model ready but I wasn’t too sure what software they commonly use at massey for slicing and making a Gcode file for the 3D printers to use. But with the help from Craig I learnt that to make sure all the sizes are alright we put my STL file into the Autodesk netfab software.

After the sizing looked fine and there wasn’t any weird geometric pop out’s, I chucked the same file into Cura, an easy access slicing software for ultimaker 3D printers that enables users to convert their STL file into a gcode file for the printer to read. Cura also enables users to see the different layers of the model and how they’ll physically print in the machine.

After I had transferred the gcode file onto an SD card, I then went to try my first ever attempt at 3D printing which was interesting as the first machine I attempted to print on messed up as the base model wasn’t sticking to the base of the printer.

After the first attempt Craig suggested that I create a larger brim onto the file. So that there was a larger base for the model when it was being printed.

Below is the 2nd attempt which did look better but it still had the same problem where it wasn’t creating a flat base on the bottom.

I then switched to a different machine because Craig suggested that it might just be that printer that was acting faulty and sure enough when we switched printers the model started to print out fine creating that flat base.

Unfortunately, I had a few errands to run while this was printing so I’ll try and see if it had successfully finished printing tomorrow.

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Week 1 Thursday

During today’s workshop in 10c5 with Sue and Faith, we were given a zero-wastage task to do, where we had to create a garment template out of paper, whatever that garment may be. With the excess pieces of paper that we cut off from our origami-like clothing item, we had to attach them back onto the clothing template to add for more dimension but also staying zero-waste fashion product. This exercise really acted in a way where it gave some insight into having fabric templates for real garments.

Zero-waste Research:

After creating these Zero-waste templates, I wanted to research more into zero waste and what are some techniques designers use in order to create these pieces. One designer I found who’s style for creation is amazing.  

Qi Wang:

A designer who’s based her brand in New York, her collection shown below experiments with geometrical pattern textiles that create mesmeric optical illusions. Some pieces of her work also include laser cutting techniques intertwined with traditional weaving and embroidery.

 3D modelling workshop:

After our one-on-one discussion with the lecturers about our current vision and processes I headed down to fablab to learn about the 3D modelling method. Which I found really interesting as I’ve never used auto desk fusion before, so it was something new and exciting. We learned how to bevel edges of the item, cut into and distort them. Below is a picture of my 3D model where I imported the vectors from illustrator and transferred it to fusion to manipulate it.

After this sort introduction I went away to see if I could make a bracelet in the same software. And sure enough after a few helpful tutorials online I was able to produce this:

The goal from here is to find a place tomorrow that I can print this and see where it goes from there.

Why 3D printing?

There are so many useful tasks that 3D printing is able to help with from making prosthetic limbs to machinery parts and even have been in-cooperated into how we make our own homes. So why wouldn’t we also test out its abilities within the apparel industry as well. Even though 3D printing hasn’t sky rocketed since the materials used for 3D printing are still in the wood works, innovators are creating a more flexible material for printing that replicates the flow and softness of fabric. I chose to base my project around 3D printing because it excites me to think that 3D printing could be the future for clothes. Imagine being able to print yourself a new pair of shoes when you wanted. Not only could this be immensely time efficient, but it can also act as a complete recyclable cycle. Once you have either grown out of your clothes or about to pass them on, you could melt the material down and reuse it for your next piece of clothing you want to print out. Although this Idea Is a bit far fetched to be fully functional in society in my lifetime, I still find the concept interesting and want to explore it further.

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Week 1 Wednesday Research:

After yesterday’s introduction into the fab lab’s tools and getting to explore the vinyl cutter’s possibilities I was truly inspired to fully explore the outcomes of digital fabrication and try and see which elements and tools I could use to create my end product.

Since I feel most comfortable with the digital process of fabrication rather than practical elements like sewing, I decided I wanted to create something that heavily relied on digital creation.  So, going back to the research I did on OS circular fashion within a team I realised that there was a lot of projects that were created via 3D printing, like Fiore Basile who created a 3D printed top and in corporate robotic weaving. And because a lot of them created the joints linking the 3D printing material together rather than stitching materials together, I thought It would be interesting to explore this further.

Inspiration for final garment:

While I had a few ganders at garment pieces to create I remembered that there was a great head piece in Janelle Monae’s music video, make me feel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGRzz0oqgUE&list=OLAK5uy_kqbZeag2Ai_9wn4GEH_Pfg0KfNTmqv2I0&index=8

I thought with some testing’s this head piece could be created with 3D printing. While I researched further into creating, I came across a few things that I could possibly in-corporate into the design:

First, I thought the material used for 3D printing is usually hard and stiff, and not ideal for clothing material. With this head piece, although it’s made from metal, it still has a drape element to it. So I went out and searched for others that had made a soft material like substance out of 3D printing and I found the designer, Danit Peleg who made a 5 piece collection of 3D printed outfits that were made out of fila flex which is a malleable substance you can use in a 3D printer that has some stretch to it.  

https://danitpeleg.com/the-process/

I thought since I was exploring the possibilities, I’ve seen scale like armour and could somehow include it with the headset. In the process of searching the internet I found a collaborative project by Hillary Sampliner, Andrea van hintum and Billy Dang, where they had created a 3D printed collar piece inspired by shark scales. Like the head piece it had this chain like element to it that I liked but I was unsure if they had created a base and then attached each scale to it. If I could create something similar but adjust the size of the scales, I could maybe achieve the illusion and feel of fabric.

Following the idea of scales, I then looked into how I could construct something similar but create more flow so that it would be easier to move around in. Uncle Jessy, a cosplay enthusiast youtuber, made a video explaining how he 3D printed 3D scales onto a fishnet like nylon material that could easily be wrapped around an object whilst give that scale effect to the attached object without breaking and being hard on the skin.

I think my further steps from here is to enrol in a workshop tutorial for the 3D printers at fablab to better my understanding of how the machine works and what software to be using to further my testing on my project. As well as figuring out what materials I can use with the specific 3D printing machines at fablab and where I can source for them since I know that 3D printing is in the direction I want to go.

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Week 1 Tuesday Fab Lab Session:

Today in our groups from yesterday we we’re introduced to the uses of a vinyl cutter as well as being able to have a tech demonstration in Massey’s Fab lab space.

I’d had no experience with a vinyl cutter before the session, so it was something completely new for me and very exciting. First Craig, our tech fab lab demonstrator, started showing us the basics of setting up a project from putting the material into the cutter to how to upload and tweek your vector-based design onto the software for the cutter to recognise.  

Once familiar with the equipment, he demonstrated that the machine could also work on fabric whether it be cutting or drawing on the material. Alice gave a piece of her thin dress garment as a tester to draw on it and funnily enough it managed to draw even though I was a little reluctant at first seeing how easily the vinyl sheet would scrunch up if it wasn’t aligned straight.

After the tech demonstration, I was really inspired to test out my own design, so I created a basic flower pattern in illustrator during the morning tea break.

Once I finished the design, I wanted to test drawing it onto one of the jean pockets I had just to see if I could incorporate this type of element into my work. We had a few tests and errors with putting the design on the fabric section initially since we were unsure of how to get the computer to recognise the fabric as the starting point, but with trial, error and then the help of Craig we finally succeeded. 

The final outcome however looked good but since the pen bled on the denim material, the design wasn’t as crisp as I would’ve liked.

After the pen on jeans, we decided to test the same pattern on a more thinner and smooth fabric. Here we tested it on a piece of scrap material from fab lab’s unwanted pieces. And the pattern came out a lot better since we played with the pressure of the pen decreasing it slightly. But there was still something off and the design didn’t look too clear.

Because the pen bled and made the pattern somewhat unrecognisable on material, we then decided to see if we could cut the pattern out on a vinyl sheet and test if that vinyl sticker is easy to apply to another material, we tested on paper for this. And it came out looking great, unfortunately we lost a few of the petals in the process of applying the vinyl to the paper but the pattern was still recognisable.

So gathering what we learnt, Because the vinyl cutter made such a crisp cut-out design out of the vinyl we thought that, that would’ve been a better way to transfer the design onto the material. If we cut out the design onto vinyl and then transferred the vinyl sticker onto the fabric for a cleaner, crisp look. So I decided to create a new design, something interesting and a little bit more intricate to see the limitations and experiment on what designs would be easier to apply than others comparing the two designs.  

Using the same scrap material from the fab lab since it was a lot easier to apply designs on it rather than the jeans we then cut out the vinyl sticker and applied it to the reverse side of the fabric for a different test. Applying the vinyl to the fabric did seem a little more difficult than the paper test but regardless the vinyl did stick to the fabric but only after a little help. Whereas on the paper test it was fairly easy to just peel the vinyl off the transfer sheet onto the paper.

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Week 1 Monday

Reverse engineering exercise:

Initially during class I didn’t have any specific idea of where I was heading with deconstructing my denim jeans but as I was unstitching the hems of one of the back pockets I realised that a lot of thread would be considered wastage. I’ve seen a few videos where people try to create something with absolutely no wastage as a challenge. And I thought I could incorporate something like that into my work, so while I was taking pieces of the item apart I made sure to be precise and neat with the unhemming so that I might be able to use that piece later.  I even kept all the those thread and labels within the garment. Keeping in mind I think we’ll need to create a piece out of the other items that the other team members brought (dress and coat).  So I left the legs of the jeans intact because I thought they could easily be incorporated into another piece.

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Week 1 Monday:

Research on Fashion/ Textile Precedents:

Working with Carissa and Laura, we oversaw researching OS Circular Fashion. I’m so glad that we were assigned this topic because I found all the projects within the website hugely inspiring. Going forward, I want to take some of these ideas/designs on board and develop them into something of my own for this paper.