04/11/08

Subtractive pattern cutting dress, by Julian Roberts

My interpretation of subtractive pattern cutting, in leather

And another one in neopreen

Neopreen dress with five tops and no hem - You decide which way you wear it

Leather sample for a jacket back

Hi everyone,
Ok since my last blog I have been mainly working on my research book and samples. The research book is basically all of my images, drawings and anything else relevent to my project, which will act to inspire me throughout the year, and show the development of my ideas. I am also making samples of different ways I can manipulate fabric, like sewing into it, pleating etc and samples of how I can create different shapes with fabric. At the moment I'm looking at leathers, and neuropreen (wetsuit fabric) as they hold their shape and don't drape.
My concept is still beetles, and from that I am mainly focusing on the way they metaphorphose in different stages of their life. I am looking at creating garments that can change, through the wearer having the option of many different ways to wear a thing, therefore changing it weach time they put it on.
We had a one day workshop with the fashion designer Julian Roberts (www.julianand.com) who taught us a pattern cutting technique called subtractive pattern cutting, where you make a tube with fabric and cut the pieces out and use the remaining fabric which produces some really great results - check out the website. I have photos, which I'll add as soon as my laptop is fixed!
We also had a day with Stelianour Sani, a photographer who's doing the shoot for our graduate programme which was a little scary to be thinking about it already, but inspirational.
I will start to design on paper soon; everyone has different ways of doing things- I prefer to make samples and work on the mannequin, some prefer to draw on paper then make.
I'll put some images of my samples up soon, as I said earlier my laptop is broken, and I'll keep you updated!
Roxanne