Dip And Sponge

Slowly things are pulling together for my project. After the Christmas holiday, I really thought about what I wanted and what I needed to be done to achieve these goals.

On Wednesday I had a dye session with David, the dye technician. I was going to dye some knitted sampled pieces that I plan to use as part of my final collection.

I used the dylon dye (as they are really good for wool fabrics), mixed with salt and water; heated them in the pans and began to dye away. Since I didn’t want my whole knitted fabric dyed, I dipped some fabric in the dye and sponged on the colour where I wanted it.

Even though I didn’t get the right colours (mixing dye colours can be such an art at times)I got the effect that I wanted because I had knitted an image and chose to use black, light grey and off white yarns, the dye colours really showed up on the sample. It also gave the image a 3-d effect which I loved (it’s so weird I am getting excited just writing about this, how sad!) Finally something is going right. So once I finished adding the dye on I waited for the samples to dry, then took them to the dye technician to steam them.

The next day I collected the samples and took them home to be washed, hoping and praying the colours will stay (please Jesus). But the annoying thing, once the samples were out the washing machine most of the colours had washed off and only light traces of colour could be seen on some parts. This didn’t discourage me, it just made me realise that I might have to find a different method to dyeing this fabric.

For my final piece I have decided to use one wool yarn and two cotton yarns, hopefully when the sample is washed the wool yarn will felt a bit giving the sample some form of texture. Also the dyes might respond better to these yarns. If all does not go to plan, I might end up using the reactive dyes to paint on the sample.

But overall I feel good about my project and no matter how many hurdles I might have to jump over, whether they’re  big or small, I know my final collection will be BANGING!

*Electric slides out the room*

Hre are a few images:

Less is More

When things don’t go your way it can be so annoying and at times frustrating .But as I am writing this,  I am happy that my devore  samples did not work because it showed me I had to develop further and taught me that your first idea is not always the best idea.

Using the prints that I had designed to do my jacquard knit with, I thought that they could look really interesting if I used them in a devore  jumper. I made the screen ( with some help of course, this was my first time) and assumed it would be smart to do small samples just to see what I might be working with. BAD IDEA! While creating the screen I realised that my images were too small but I went ahead anyway and did the ‘small’ samples. I chose to dye the sampled fabric before devore-ing it. This was so I could see the devore pattern clearer once it was finished.

I did not like the end results on my samples because the prints that I had chosen resembled African prints and also within the prints there was too much going on.

Now that I look back, I think maybe block patterns or some sort of pattern that is very simple but yet effective will look better as a devore print for my knit.

In this part of my project, Less is More!

I did a few more sample using simpler shapes and this is how they came out.

They all still need more work!

Rough and Textured

For my collection I wanted some parts to look distressed and rough. My original prints were too refined so I have tried adding another layer on top of them where they now look more textured and a bit more rough. I plan to try out a few of them as a jacquard to see how they look.

Here are a few:

Practice make you perfect but in my case better!

I always say I HATE TO DRAW! It’s not that I totally despise drawing, it’s just that I don’t think I’m that good at it. But today we had a workshop where (you guessed it) we had to draw for 3 hours!!!! I was quite nervous and a bit insecure about my drawing skills, so after sulking for the first 20mins of the session, I realised that I actually needed this to build my confidence in my drawing ability. Going through my sketchbook, I saw that there was quite a few blank pages where I had planned to sketch some designs but they had been blank for months. Even though I do have design ideas I have been afraid to draw them down thinking that they will look really bad and not reflect my design the way I saw it in my mind.

That’s why I think I enjoy doing toiles because it shows  you exactly what the garment will look like, what the proportion will look like on the body and the movement of the garment.

Once I got drawing the final images, it did not come out too badly.  I actually liked them and on the plus side it gave me extra confidence that with a bit of practice I could be quite decent.

As my parents always say, practice make you perfect but in my case it made me better.

Here are a few images that I drew in the session: