As part of my fashion degree at university I have been working on my tailoring project, and have recently handed in my final two piece collection. I wanted to share my piece on my blog and show the fantastic images shot my the very talented Joanna Walker. My final piece took a long time to make, and there was a lot of new techniques to learn, lots of sampling, designing and toiling carried out that led up to the final outfit.
As part of my fashion degree we had to design and construct a two piece tailored outfit. I decided to use materials that would not normally be associated with tailoring such as cotton organdie. I worked on sublimation printing using a watercolour bee design I had painted in my sketchbook. I decided to look at ways to incorporate this bee design into my final piece. After a lot of sampling onto a variety of fabrics, changing the colours, scale and placement of the bee motif, my final outcome shows the bee print onto the sleeves of the jacket and across the legs of the trousers. Within my project I have explored themes such as translucency and fragility, taking inspiration from butterflies and their wings to create interesting textures and layers in my work. The sleeves of the final piece are based strongly on the concept of wings; as I used cotton organdie as a base layer for providing structure underneath, and then made voile sleeves to go on top (which have the bee print on). Polyester tulle was then added on top to add volume into the sleeves and to really make the piece come alive. To incorporate detail within the sleeves I hand sewed small swarvoski crystals onto the piece, which added subtle hints of colours too. The second piece of the outfit, the trousers, have cotton organdie shorts attached to them, which are lined with habtaoi silk. The trousers are fairly minimal compared to the jacket, as the main attention is drawn to the sleeves of the jacket. The collar on the jacket is slightly detached at the back of the neck, which creates an interesting shape.
I worked with third year NUA photography student Joanna Walker to photograph the final pieces and I am really pleased with the outcome. Take a look a the photos here: