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.