Fashion and Textiles

Spending the week in fashion and textiles was really enjoyable and I found the process we followed to create the final piece of work at the end of the week really enjoyable. We started off the week by focusing purely on colour, making sheets of colour swatches based on a strip of an image that we were given. From the strip we were given we had to pick out certain colours and recreate them with inks, paints and coloured papers. Creating a perfect match for the colours was easier than I thought it would be since I had already done the colour barcode piece for the river project.
 

The stimuli strip I was given for the piece

After the paper swatches were painted we were given two black paper bags to transform into something wearable, although not necessarily an actual garment. I cut into the bags to flatten them out into four sections and removed the handles. From these four sections I used 3 panels for the main body of the top and cut the last into 3 strips which I then wove together to form a plait like structure to be worn around the neck or arm. I then used a hole punch down the sides of the 3 panels to lace them together in a corset style fastening with a folded bow shape joining the two sides together. 


The plaited paper neck piece

The lace up corset style side panels

In terms of decorating the garment I used the paper colour swatches I made to create imagery that linked in with the original strip the colours came from. I cut out shapes that we're relating to the necks of the bottles, with positive and negative shapes being used from various coloured papers. Each of the panels went from light to dark to create a composition that tied each of the panels together without them all being the same. I felt the piece worked well as a whole as it was fully wearable and had clear links to the original image that I worked from. I also liked the woven paper strips to make the neck fastening as I think it was a bold statement part of the piece. I particularly liked the photographs of the piece with other people who had the same stimuli strip as they were all totally different but with similarities in colour and lines.