A Frantic Month.

February is gone and was a whirlwind. The month was spent fleshing out what I will be doing this month and next and completing the second garment.

The programming was torturous in a number of ways. Sharon and I hit a wall with the computer pattern capacity and this meant some fancy footwork to circumnavigate the system. Eventually we did it and the pieces were knitted. All IMAGES ARE BEFORE WET FINISHING

COLLAR

BODY PANELS



INSIDE  OF BODY PIECE AFTER INITIAL CONSTRUCTION

FRONT OF BODY PIECE AFTER INITIAL CONSTRUCTION



INSIDE SHOT SHOWING ATTACHMENT OF COLLAR PANEL



OUTSIDE DETAIL OF GARMENT SHOWING FINISHED GARMENT LAID FLAT

INSIDE OF FINISHED GARMENT LAID FLAT

As you can see from the images these were very large pieces of fabric and do not in any way suggest they will be pieces for a garment to be worn by a normal height person. The very long piece is actually photographed hanging from the third floor balcony, and that is a collar panel...

The fear I had  [apart from had I made an insane mistake in my calculations....] was this garment wouldn't felt properly. I wanted to do it in the machine I had felted all the other pieces in as to change to a commercial machine at this stage would carry with it the risk I could over felt the garment or damage the fabric. However given the size of the pre-wet finished garment there was a real chance it would not have enough space to felt in my machine.

This time I got lucky, which given I am generally pretty risk adverse was an exceptional outcome. In fact I had the garment finished and ready to felt for a week before I decided to take the risk.

Next I have to get my head around the photo-shoot and the final garment....then it is just two written documents, my portfolio and and a conference paper and possibly a PhD application....OH DEAR...

Post PGDIP, post Xmas post....

The last month has been both busy and exasperating. The presentation was fine and I now have a PG DIP.

So only another 7 months, a little luck and a lot of work it will be done and I will have the MA.

Christmas was a difficult time so far as making physical progress on work was concerned, I also had Flu so that was two weeks of very little....however I did account for this in the period leading up and it is sometimes useful taking the time to step back and just think.

Since returning to Uni I have been trying to focus on getting the Rosette fabric correct...[ at times I did wonder if it was possible.....]. The amount of time both Sharon and I have spent fretting about why it wouldn't knit and searching for a possible programming fault is rediculous. Had I known at the beginning it is entirely possible I may of done something else ....but I did not so after about 7 weeks of banging our heads against the desk Sharon tried processing it on another computer and it worked first time. This means that there must be a factory preset in the system on the computer we usually use that was preventing it being processed, there was no mistake in the programme and we weren't doing anything wrong....

Part of me could cry....time is so tight and even though I believe my timeline will hold I really don't want to waste a single moment BUT to put another spin on it it has proved a point I always believed to be true....while computers have made so much possible they are very limited when not in the hands of Technicians and Designers who are willing to question what they are saying. It is in someways like dealing with a petulant child......you have to find a way of communicating the child will accept and sometimes you are not doing anything wrong it is the child at fault...and the child needs to learn. So that puts the ball back in your court.....  This experience has at least given me the chance to think again about the idea of the trilogy of understanding I thought about in my initial proposal and how agnostic thought and gnostic thought have to be brought together in order to achieve anything close to the best outcomes in the design context.

I am now past the tipping point in this project. The research journey out has been gentle and unplanned, I have developed my work through a combination of wandering, reflection and practice. It has been successful in more ways than I could have imagined. My work is now my own, my choices and experiences have made it such . The early influences are there however I have molded it through the experience of questioning it. The path back is much more structured, I am drawing the threads together and I think I am in a position to say I have answered my question to an extent I am ready to pull it together.

That isn't the end though....I am now addressing how this will be used in my future career, how I can show others in a way that might engage them in my work so it goes on ....as always.

BIG presentation....done and done...

Today was all about the presentation....and thank goodness it is over.

It is amazing the way a twenty minute spot can actually blow everything out of the water for the preceding fortnight.

I think it went OK it all felt unreal, I seem to have developed a vocabulary that is all about my aesthetic and how process and practice are two parts of the same journey. It is strange the way a personal realisation about something as unromantic as knitting can actually be quite emotional to recognise.

I have missed feeling this about what I do..

Tick - Tock.....

The last month has been about....programming and a yarn hunt.

Sharon and I have spent about......23 programming hours trying to solve one problem. And it wasn't even an interesting one. Long story short...we had built the pattern to do a certain thing but at no point had we given any consideration to the pleat repeats if we held one edge, no real reason too it was just another element. However what we were treating as a repeat wasn't the same as what the programme thought was a repeat so when we inserted the held area it travelled so it was in the right place to begin with but gradually moved. On the screen it should of been correct but the economisers were having their say. It is now sorted but the problem was simply finding it.....sometimes it is the little things that trip you up.

Anyways the garment is as I type being knitted....so as long as nothing else goes wrong ...please let nothing happen....I will have my finished garment for my presentation in December, PHEW.

Now I need to sort out images for said presentation and find new yarn.....think I have but I am taking nothing for granted......and work out what I am going to do for the other 5 months of my M.A. as it is looking like I will have finished these garments by the end of February or beginning of March.....see that's what happens when you font load, you end up doing more...

From Felt to Felted...

Well I have knitted down enough fabric to produce a toile in the real fabric.....and it is an enormous amout given I am constructing a gillet! Obviously after it is constructed and felted I should have a garment that fits........

The images show the fabric in strips before felting draped over a stairwell just to demonstrate the amount, put together before and after felting (on a double bed to give an idea of shrinkage) and finally pinned on the stand side by side with the felt fabric toile (as opposed to the felted knitted toile....stay with me)...

Now I have to finish constructing and press and I should have all I need to programme make the finished garment.......I love it when a plan comes together!!!

        

        

                                                      

JUM NAKAO/A COSTURA DO INVISÍVEL

JUM NAKAO/A COSTURA DO INVISÍVEL

At last I have found the designer who made the paper gowns I saw an image of in about January 2010.....so that's about 10 months of searching! Amazing to me how the sense of drama is what I am aiming for in my garments ...... and even though I saw one thumbnail when I was surfing the collection as a whole is spookily reflective of my own style. No man is an Island ....

So Long.......but the Work Continued....

It has been a long time since I have been here but I have been working hard. Most of the reflective work I have been doing has been in my journal and of course I have had the kids at home!! Term has now restarted so time to get you up to date...if you care.

I have been making headway with toiles so that is fantastic, it means the fabric now has a form that can be worn. The process has been a little tortuous as I only had very small pieces to work from so in a way it has been design by photography. Luckily this works well on the stand as I can take my images home and stitch them together in my imagination and on the computer and make a whole garment out of snapshot.

From the images I generate a pattern based on repeats of the fabric and then make a garment out of felt in order to try it out. If this works I will then be able to make a toile in the yarn by programming the machine to produce lengths and attaching them together appropriately.

I have toiled two garments and am currently finishing a third and my first real fabric toile is knitted and waiting to be put together.