sense-of-place-eca - Tumblr blog

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Ruby applied bleach onto the denim in hand created patterns which made an unexpected and attractive design on the fabric.

This was then used in areas of the final garments, in particular the woven section of the back of the coat and sleeves of the jacket. When cut into sections the bleach looked really effective as the shapes occurred randomly and complimented the designs on the other fabric grounds.

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Garment development:

Pinning our samples onto the mannequin whilst deciding which textiles to use in the garments.

One of our samples containing free machining and hand embroidery as well as print (top) we decided to add some bleach to in order to discover the effect.

It changed some of the colours but ultimately looked very interesting and inspired the techniques in our final garments heavily. Taking elements of both our first samples, as well as incorporating our new ideas together.

Seeing samples on the mannequin was a great way for us to visualise what would work as a fashion piece.

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Pictures Zoe sent of her final trousers.

We had discussed the use of denim and weave and she really considered this when making these. 

Although the materials for her weave were quite eccentric, most of the colours tied in with our samples and the fact part of it was woven echoed our inspiration.

She used dark denim so that our designs would co-ordinate and we liked that although the woven section has loads going on the rest of the garment is simple. 

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Some of our prints on the ‘wrong side’ of the denim we used for our garments.

Being able to use both sides of the denim showed us another advantage of using denim as a base. We realised the potential of denim and it’s versatile nature, encouraging us to experiment. 

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This was the panel for the front of our coat and incorporated both our designs in the palette.

The contrast of the images, particularly with the use of colour is exactly what we aimed to achieve. The final designs tied together the work of Ruby, Zoe and I despite our completely different starting points and individual ‘sense of place’.

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As well as the buildings from Ruby’s work we wanted to incorporate the loose marks from my drawings from life. 

I exposed another screen with some of my marks that I had scaled up onto it.

We mixed binders of our favourite colours of the palette to begin printing for the final garments.

By blocking out certain areas of my screen and selecting where to print carefully we were able to get a slightly different effect every time. Using a variety of our colours these exciting samples were created for the pockets of our garments.

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Fraying denim using a teasel brush gave the material the distressed look we were looking for. Tearing at the fibres created a softness which we decided to carry into our final designs as we felt it was a unique way of using denim (a material we see so often it could be seen as mundane).

Our idea was lead by the trends we discovered in our research and applied to an androgynous style, with a certain edge we wanted to portray.

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Swatches of colour after a busy day of printing.

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It’s clear from seeing the grounds before and after printing several times - layering the images worked well and the use of different colours provides contrasts which make these samples really striking.

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We began with a base of different materials, placing them like a jigsaw in order to print onto with no boundaries.

This gave us an idea of the colours that worked well together and how the printed imagery appeared when layered.

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The Worldhood palette from WGSN we worked from- specifically choosing to work with:

INDIGO UNIFORM

SCARLET ALERT

LEMON FIZZ

MAUVE CONCRETE 

AQUARIAN GREEN 

as well as the core colours.

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Grout and plaster applied like paint. I did life drawing onto some of our printed denim to see the effect when it was applied less heavily. It didn’t peel off, as before and gave the material a unique surface texture .

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Textiles exploration + sketchbook.

We experimented with:

Red puff binder onto hessian - we actually preferred the block of pigment before it was heat pressed as the texture of the puff wasn’t nice on this fabric at all!

Bleaching - as a way of distressing, this worked depending on how dark the denim was dyed already. When it took a lot of the colour out it was really effective.

Using inky splatters - this also gave a dirty, almost ‘gritty’ look like the inverse effect of the bleach.

Lots of fraying and tearing at fabric to give soft edges.

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Working with grout- Urban textures.

I mixed up grout with some water- adding a little quink ink to give it colour and simply painted it onto fabric. On another sample I covered denim in the mixture and both gave such different effects. The thicker it was applied, the more likely a crackled texture could be achieved - however this did crumble off substantially. When there was layers of thin and thick it worked best as some could be allowed to fall off and leave a trace on the fabric while other areas stayed in tact.

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Development sample

Using hessian-like material, we decided to try the drawn thread technique (in keeping with the woven effect we wanted to achieve). As this was an experiment of fabric and textures, I discovered that the fabric looked interesting when gathered - and it gave our printed imagery a 3D quality.

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Development.

Denim + bleach 

Weave experiment.

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sketchbook collages

Effectively combining inspiration for the work of Ruby, Zoe and I.

Warped images inspired us and we experimented with distorting our photographs used in Part 1 of the project.

The PDF we received from Zoe contained some fascinating images and stills from her film of inspiration- these contributed greatly to me and Ruby’s initial influences.

By using photo-montage with the addition of our own artwork we created an aesthetic for our designs. 

Hand drawn combined with stark angles and the addition of the ‘Worldhood’ colour palette gave us loads to work with.