More textiles work...

This is another piece that I have been working on in my textiles project. This like the previous is supposed to be a large sample working on developing techniques I have used in my sketchbook. I decided to separate it up into panels and create a skirt. Again, it can be unfinished and doesn't have to be neat and the focus is more on the actual samples. I prefer the corset piece I made as the samples were more refined (a word that my teachers have engraved in my mind...we're constantly told to refine things) and I put more time and effort into making it but as promised here is my second piece. 


 I used a mola technique for the green holly shapes and appliqued on the black pieces. I also printed on circles to the surface. 



A very simple one using red and black paint. 


I used a leather type fabric and draw onto this using white pastel which gives a really interesting effect when smudged on the material. I then stitched over this. 

I stitched two pieces of yarn together to create the swirls, which also transferred the pink material onto the cotton. I painted and drew on the green background and black swirls. 


 Very simply stitched yarn onto a clear material and then spray painted gold onto certain sections. 


 Made using rolled up lengths of fabric and drawn with pen. 

Experimenting with pattern

I have had the most productive few days and I'm hoping it's going to continue like that! I've been working on a piece for my Textiles A2 coursework for part of this. We're on a section of our work where we're experimenting with pattern and surface design. Our brief was to create a piece which showed pattern from our sketchbook. I decided to create a corset type piece with 4 different panels. If you're wondering why it looks like a complete mess with threads and raw edges, it's because it doesn't need to be neatly finished as it's only a development piece, so please ignore this! The front two panels are both to do with my theme (can you guess what it is...?) and the back two are inspired by some designers I looked at in my work. I hope you like it and if you're interested I've written underneath each photo how I made the section. 


How I made it....I drew out with the outline of the pattern with pen and filled in the sections with black or green paint. I then stitched around the edges. 

How I made it.... I twisted a long piece of green fabric and stitched over the top to create the stems. I then cut out pink circles and stitched randomly over to create the roses. I also sewed and glued book pages into squares. 
 How I made it....I used a mola technique to layer and cut out materials. I created a paper layer with printed red rings and a watercolour background, and used a blue fabric and some purple napkins. 


How I made it... I drew out the pattern onto paper and scanned it onto the computer. I then used a pixlr to fill in sections of the pattern with colour. I printed this out and stitched it onto fabric. 

Evergreen Ivy

I had my first ever driving lesson today (by the way how nice and sunny was it today!?), which was really fun actually (I didn't crash into anyone so that's definitely a good thing). I'm also pretty nervous for a job interview I have at Topshop tomorrow. I've had a few sales assistant interviews before (I had one at French Connection once where you had to pick out different outfits - actually pretty fun) but I've either not got the job or it's ended up being for the wrong hours etc. Has anyone had an interview at Topshop before? Any advice? I'm not expecting anything to come from it though, to be honest, I'm just in shock that I even got an interview!

I made this critical study response yesterday and I thought I'd show you in case you're interested. It's supposed to show at least 2 hours of work and is taking inspiration from a certain designer  (Imelda Cartini in my case). Mine's very basic and is clearly not at a designer standard (far from it) but I wanted to focus mainly on the idea of leaves and ivy being glued/stitched onto a dress. I had to create a base layer first using some plain black fabric. I then layered on some white netting. It doesn't really show up well in the photos but it's a lot neater in real life! and then finally added the twisted sections and the leaves. As it's only a critical response, it doesn't need to be neat or finished off, hence why it looks like such a mess (I'm too much of a perfectionist) but I hope you like it anyway!
Lots of new items in my shop by the way - have a look here

What do you think? What are you doing this weekend?






AS Textiles Final Exam

First of all, I'm sorry for my absence recently. The reason for my lack of blogging is my textiles and art exams that have been going on this week. I've had piles of coursework to get through and exams to prepare for. Luckily, today I finished my textiles exam (yay!) which feels like such a relief. It was an 8 hour exam (actually quite a short time when you have a whole garment to make) over 2 days. I thought I'd show you my final piece and see what you all thought. Originally, all the fabrics were seperate (so I dyed the blue fabric and layered the black pvc over the top, I then cut out all of the squares and sewed around the edges). Creating the fabric for the body of the dress probably took the longest since I had to sew around every single square and I had originally fitted my pattern pieces to a mannequin at home so it doesn't fit completely well, so I had to make a few time-costly alterations. It went fairly well (a few mistakes but I managed to sort them out) but what with me being a perfectionist, there are plenty of things I would like to improve on it. By the way, a bit of context for you, the theme of the whole project was 'Covert and Obscured' and my design is based on various observations and critical studies that I did in my sketchbook (Gareth Pugh and Fyodor Golan). Anyway, I hope you like it and wish me luck for my next two days of art exams starting tomorrow!







Under the Sea

For the past few weeks and loads over half term, I've been slaving away trying to finish all of my art and textiles coursework (the deadline's Monday!). This included creating my final piece in textiles. The whole course built up from the overall theme of Natural forms (from which I chose 'The Sea'). The idea was then to create a whole sketchbook full of development in order to create a final outcome, which is what you can see below.  The dress was originally only white cotton fabric, so producing it not only involved sewing it all together but dying, batik-ing (using wax to resist the dye), embroidery, mola etc. etc. Overall, the garment was supposed to show about 15 hours of work in total. I'm pleased with how it's turned out (there's always going to be something I'm not happy with though. I won't tell you what!) and fingers crossed I get a good mark for it. 
What have you all been up to this half term? 








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