Maggot Day

Today I had a CAD knitting session with Simon and I was ecstatic at the results.

After clearing  my mind and choosing elements of my work to concentrate on and push the idea to its limit, I decided that today will be maggot day. I know that sounds pretty weird and to some extent ridiculous, but today was literally maggot day. No it does not involve real maggots but the whole CAD session was aimed at  trying to recreate the appearance of Maggots using knitted fabric. Looking back at my previous samples, I realised that I needed a much heavier weight fabric, this might make it look more masculine and also more cosy for winter.

I managed to Google maggots and without throwing up or continuously itching myself, looked at their shapes and sizes (just thinking about them makes me cringe). After seeing this, I drew my own interpretation of them on the CAD machine to knit as a jacquard blister, once this was stored in the program we began to knit away .

We tried different tensions, yarns and elastic - each sample gave a different effect which was interesting. Also, some came out good while others didn’t quite hit the mark.

I am going to continue exploring this maggot idea trying different yarns to see what I can achieve. I think out of my knit samples, the maggots are my favourite because of the textures I get, and depending what yarns I use they look so real at times.

 

Here are a few of the samples

Clear Mind Clear Focus!

After my tutorial with Kathy and my group, I realised  that I had given myself too much work. When I started my Windrush project I read so many books and went to a couple of events; this gave me a great knowledge of the Caribbean migrants. This was good because it allowed me to understand my topic thoroughly so I had a strong foundation for my work. Naturally I am a story teller and enjoy reading (I am not a boffin), so most of my ideas for my project came from stories and personal experiences from some of the migrants. Story telling is a strong theme that I want to continue in my work through my collection, the photography, look book and my presentation at the final expo show.

Throughout this year I’ve been trying to squeeze about twenty themes (okay maybe a little exaggeration) into my collection, which obviously equals: bad idea. It made my work look scattered as if I wasn’t sure of that I was doing.

I sat down and started going through my work and said to myself ‘Delores you are just doing way too much’ (i.e. I am not crazy just to let you know, but I do talk to myself at times, hopefully other people will admit they do too and I won’t feel like the crazy cat lady). I went through my ideas and chose the ones which I thought were the strongest and could get quite a few ideas from. I had to also think what story was I trying to tell to the world about the migrants through my garments . After much deliberation I decided to stick to my initial idea about the maggots. I always try to follow my gut instincts, no matter how many times I tend to move away from the maggots, I always get drawn back to that story because even though it’s a sad story, being a designer there is so many textures and knit fabrics I can explore using this one story. When I first started this project, I wanted to tell a story about how the migrants suffered in this country but they were strong and hopeful people , who just got on with life.

And I plan to do just that, using the knit textures I plan to recreate a distressed eaten away look. Then using the colours to reflect their bold character and the fun that they had at the house parties. So at this moment all I am going to be concentrating on is creating knit samples that reflect this.

The Importance of collaboration

Today we did a workshop with Rhian Solomon where she talked to us about how collaborating with others was very important, as her work would not be active without the assistance of tailors, plastic surgeons and pattern cutters.

We had to pair up with someone who was not on the same course with us, I was with a textile student and a photographer. Once in the group, we had to find out what we all had in common and what the difference was in our work. One thing my group had in common was that our work always had some sort of emotional meaning and that we wanted people to be connected to our work emotionally. The thing that was different between us minus our craft was how we wanted it to be used. The photographer wanted to go into phycology, helping people with therapy using her work while I wanted to make garments and be more involved in the fashion industry.

I truly enjoyed this class as I got to meet different people whose work was very interesting and I liked the fact that everyone wanted to use their work in different career fields.

I think that collaboration is very important as it helps you to grow and learn new things that maybe might help you grow creatively and personally. This is very important to me as I will be collaborating with a photographer for my look book and a film student to try and do a mini commercial for my brand. So far it’s been a really good experience but it has made me realise how much work I have to put in on my side for things to work smoothly. Overall I’m excited about my collaborations and what the final product will be.

I know it will be very interesting .

Old to new

I love this video as it shows the olden time and the modern! it has such a nostalgic fell to it. In a way this is what I am trying to do with my collection, I am trying to make the old into something new and modern.
Plus it doesn't hurt that this song is a banger! plus the song kind of vibes with my collection.

Enjoy!