Live Brief

We have now started our next brief; this is a live brief where we will be working with real customers where they give us our inspiration and tasks to do.

Our choice is between too companies, Moo, who is a fashion designer working with leather, they want us to create a design for a lining of a bag. If they like our final design, they will use it on a special edition bag for the spring 2013 collection. They would like us to research into the ethos of their company and try and create a piece which will fit in well with all the other items that they sell in their shop.

Our other choice is a free-lance interior designer; we will be creating a fabric to cover a chair and a window seat. The chosen design will be put into a large grade 2 listed building. She would like us to research into Charles Rennie mackintosh and his wife for ideas for our designs

I have chosen to do the interior design project as I feel this would most benefit my future plans for my education.

My Evaluation

This project has been all about nature. For the last 7 weeks we have had to produce, a sketchbook, visual sheets, mood boards, design sheets and a bag all to do with nature, and a season of our choice. I have enjoyed this project and although there have been some ups and downs and things I would change I do believe that I have really got my teeth into this project and you can see that in the quality of my work.
   For the first week of our project we had a full week of observational drawing, I believe this gave us a good chance to practice drawing from real life instead of our imagination or a photograph, although some people didn’t enjoy it, I though it gave us a good experience. You could also class drawing from real life a good way to research nature as we were so close to it for a week. Other ways that I also did research were primary and secondary. Because my chosen season was autumn, I have been lucky that we are in autumn at the minute, as I have been able to collect a lot of primary research throughout the project. My main source of primary research though, came from a day trip to Cawthorne Park; here I took many pictures of all things nature, including animals, rivers and trees.
   My secondary research was also quite simple to find, I looked through books and on the internet. Quite a lot of designers and artist’s incorporate nature into their work quite often so luckily I found a lot of nice artist research that fit well with my project.
   I picked autumn as my chosen season for a few reasons, first of all when I think of autumn, I think of the bright, rich colours that come along with it, the warm reds and the golden yellows, and I really wanted to incorporate them into my work. Also as I have said, we are in autumn at the minute and so as soon as my teacher told us to pick a season I knew if I picked autumn I could gather a lot of primary research.
   After I had collected my research I used it all as inspiration for my tree, for example, I had seen a picture of a hedgehog in autumn, on the internet which I really liked, so I stated drawing the hedgehog on my visual sheets. I then found an artist who drew autumn animals for children’s books and I really liked his work, so I took his work as inspiration and drew a hedgehog in a childlike way on my bag.
   Looking back at my project I would say if anything, the one thing that I slacked on was my experimentation. I did do the basic sampling of weaving, knitting and felting, but when it got to going into the workshop and experimenting with colours, textiles and patterns I didn’t do anywhere near as much as I should have done. Unfortunately I was so busy making sure I was up to date with everything else that my experimentation just got put the back of my mind. Also I was in a rush to get my bag finished and so I just wanted to test out my ideas that I had for my bag to make sure they worked. I think the problem that I had really comes down to my time management, I didn’t realise how short of a time period 7 weeks really was until I got down to the last week and a half and I was rushing to get everything finished.
   My chosen artist who gave me a lot of inspiration for the style of my bag and a man call Brian Wildsmith. He is an illustrator for children’s books and I just love his work. It is so colourful and bright, full of autumnal colours. Also his work isn’t perfect, it looks quite scribbly and childlike and very simplistic, no shading and not that much detail. So I did my own interpretation of his work and drew a hedgehog in a simple, childlike way and made that into a screen print to put onto my bag.
   We had two choices for the design of our bag, a slouch bag, or a tote bag. I decided to do a tote bag for a very simple reason; I believe it would be used more. I would have liked to use my bag as a bag to take to college although I later found out that we wouldn’t be able to have our bag for at least a year. But I thought that the simple design would be more practical for day-to-day life.
   I believe that my bag design would easily be able to be manufactured in a large quantity, as it is only a simple design and made 90% out of cotton it would be cheap and easy to mass reproduce. I would say this is also a good reason why it was good to pick a tote bag to make.
   I would say that my bag design looked a lot like my final design, I stuck to the colour scheme   and did my pattern the exact same as what it was on my design sheet. There was only one thing that I had to change on my bag that was different to my final design, this was my handle. On my final design, I had planned to weave it, 240cm of it but when it had taken me just over 2 hours to do around 20cm I realised that I didn’t have time to do it, if I had anticipated how long it would have taken me to weave that much I would have started a long time before I did, but me and my tutor came up with the idea to plat my handles instead. And in hindsight my handles are now a lot stronger than they would have been if I had woven them. I also believe that they look better than the weaving would have done too.
   Overall I think my project went well, I managed to hand everything in on the deadline, with no missing pieces of work and I would say all my work that I handed in was to a very high standard too although I wouldn’t say that I got to that point without a few things going wrong.
   My first major problem that went wrong was when I was dying my fabric for my bag, I had just finished dying all my fabric in light colours including yellow and orange when unfortunately someone got navy blue dye on my work, as my work was so wet the blue ran as well. I tried fixing it the best I could by rinsing it straight away under cold water trying to get the dark blue dye out, thankfully I did but unfortunately it took some of my light coloured dye out at the same time. To fix this second problem I just made sure that I came in extra early on the next class lesson so I could re-dye my fabric.
   As I wrote about earlier I also had a problem with my handles when starting to construct my bag, I thankfully fixed this problem though and actually came out with a better outcome than I was originally going to anyway.
   I would say my main problem of this project has been my time management, although I haven’t been slacking and not working on what I should have been, I think I have just been a little too relaxed in my thinking, and didn’t realise just how short of time, 7 weeks actually was. Until it got down to the last two weeks of this project I haven’t been stressing as much as should have been.
   So no I don’t think I have handled my time management well for this project, so I need to bear in mind for the next project just how little time I have to do everything and work as hard and fast as I can to make sure I get everything done.
   Overall I am happy with this project, I have enjoyed the last 7 weeks as I would say I have learnt many new skills and overcome quite a few problem, yet still I have handed in a project to a high standard without missing any deadlines, if I did this project again I would change my time management. But like I said, I am extremely happy with my overall outcome.

My Bag

So after a 7 week project it had now come down to making my bag. I had picked my designs and what I was going to do on it.

FRONT/BACK
   The front and back of my bag are the same; I have dyed a piece of white cotton with procien dyes, to create the look of a sunset in autumnal colours. I then screen printed hedgehogs walking around my bag with discharge paste. To add extra detail to the bag I also embroidered into every other hedgehog on the front and back of my bag.

SIDES/BOTTOM
   For the sides and bottom of my bag I have got a repeated pattern going all the ways around of leaves, it is quite a simplistic pattern but I think this adds to the character of the bag.
   To do this pattern I dyed white cotton with a watered down yellow procien dye, I then printed with discharge paste my leaves in autumn colours.

HANDLES
   I had a problem with my handles! I had planned to weave my handles, 240cm of it, but I didn’t anticipate how long it would actually take to do this, and when it had taken me almost 2 hours to do around 20cm of it I decided that I wouldn’t have time to weave my handles. So instead I decided to plat them. Which I am actually very happy with, and in hindsight my platted handles would have been a lot stronger than my woven ones anyway.

Samples in the Workshop

If anything in this project I feel I have let myself down with the samples in the workshop, I would say this is because of my time management that my sampling and experimentation has just been pushed to the back of my mind. Unfortunately I only managed to do around 7 or 8 samples for this project which really isn’t enough at all.
   Although, I am happy with the samples that I have done. I made two screens for this project, one as a background colour or my pictures and the other to add details to my pictures that I have created. My screen prints are of a hedgehog and a leaf.
   I will use this downfall in my project as learning curve for my next project and make sure I give enough time to do the recommended amount of samples, which is over 50 and I will make sure I work on my time management.

Primary Research

   For this project my friend and Iwent on a trip to a local park, where we took photos of all things nature. We spent a full day there taking pictures of small scale this like grass and leaves to large scale thing like the landscape of the park and the river.

These are just a few of the pictures that we took…

Experimentation- knitting

It wasn’t too hard for me to learn how to knit as I already had a rough idea of how to do it, our teach put a video on for us to watch on how to knit which made it easier for us too as if any of us got stuck, we could just revert back to watching the video.

   If anything made it hard for me to knit, it was the fact that I had quite large knitting needles to knit with, which although I liked the effect it gave to my knitting, it kept dropping stiches because of the size of my needles.
   But I would say I took a positive out of knitting as I will now know how to knit for the rest of my life which I would say is a very good skill to have.

Experimentation- Felting

   I would probably say that out of all our samples that we learned, felting was my least favourite. Felting takes around 30 minutes to do but feels like a lifetime.
   First of all you have to get some white sheep wool. You lay it flat in thin layers on the table, after that you can then start adding colour to it. You lay colour sheep wool over the white layer to create your image. After you have made you picture, you then lay a piece of fishnet over your wool. You have to drench your wool with water. Once your wool is soaked, you can then start rolling it. You need to roll it 4 times, for four minutes each time, turning it 90 degrees after each 4minute roll.
   Once you have rolled your wool for around 16 minutes you should have made felt. You then need to dip it in boiling water for one minute so all the fibres of the wool stick together. It then needs 24 hours to dry.
   The reason I don’t like felting is because, one it is very tiring to create, and two, I don’t really like the end result as you can’t really get it very neat.

Experimentation-Weaving

Cardboard Loom


Today we got taught a new technique, we got shown how to weave. First of all we used a cardboard loom, which is just a small A5 piece of cardboard with teeth cut out of it at the top so you can thread yarn around it to create a weft,(you can also use bigger pieces of cardboard if you wish). You then weave in and out of the yarn to create the weave. With a cardboard loom, you cut the wool or material you are weaving with at the end of each row. I don’t really like my cardboard loom as I don’t like the effect it gives when you cut the wool off at the end of each row as I feel it looks messy.


Peg Loom

The next sample that we did was weaving on a peg loom. I much preferred this sample to the cardboard loom as it looked a lot neater. To create a weave on a cardboard loom, you first have to make your loom, you thread some cotton through a small hole in the bottom of the pegs and then place the pegs into a holder provided. You then weave in and out of the pegs. When you have finished, take the pegs out of the holder, tie all the cotton together, and there you go. One peg loom!


Extended sample


I also did an extended sample in weaving; I did this on a machine called the ‘loom’. I found this process so much faster and simpler than the other weaving techniques, and in my opinion it looks a lot nicer as well. I may consider using this technique on my bag.

Nature

   We have started a new brief! For this project, the theme is nature; we will be creating a sketching to do with everything nature. We will be learning new techniques such as felting, knitting and weaving and our final outcome will be to create a bag with at least one woven panel.
   This project will last 6 weeks and will have a week whilst we are on holiday to complete all our work. At the minute I am quite excited to get on with my project and hopefully I will face no serious problems throughout my project. I will tell you all about my project and the goings on throughout it when I next blog.