Unit X | Stand Work and Design Development

To start off the design process, we decided to look at the structure of martial arts garments that already exist. Nicole purchased a karate uniform online so that we could do some stand work, and pin it in different formations. One of the things we specifically tried to do was see if we could make the bulky/spacious garment look more feminine.
This helped us to picture what kind of garments we might have in our collection.

In our tutorial with Louise she suggested that we test print placement with a projector. After we had our screens sent off we took our chosen motifs to the projector to experiment. Unfortunately because of the projector the edges were blurred, however we could still get a jist of what the print looked like. We might have to try the process again with smaller images on the acetate to see if we can get a well-focused image with better positioning.

Unit X | Fabric Sourcing and Emboridery

This week we sourced our fabrics in order to prepare them for sampling. We decided to stay experimental with our fabrics and give ourselves a lot to work with. I went for a range of cottons and silks, both light and heavy weight.
We attempted to source outside of the universities resources and visited Bennett Silks. A few fabrics took our interest but the prices were around £23-£28 a metre, which on a student budget isn't very economical. In the end most of our fabrics came from the MMU fabric store, with the exception of a few online buys and some sourced from fabric shops in the city centre.
We dyed the fabrics different grey shades to keep with our colour palette.

Me and Nicole also sorted out our screens for the print room and booked some space. Unfortunately the print room can get very busy and is often fully booked, so to prevent people being left with no time there is a new rule for this unit where you can only book two days per week. Because of this, I will need some other form of sampling to experiment with as my time printing will be really limited.

Another specialism I have been mixing with print is embroidery. I thought I could develop the embroidery skills I already have in both machine and hand. I started by pin tucking different fabrics with different needle sizes, and also layering fabrics together to see what texture was created. I think they turned out well and they relate to the bandage drawings I have chosen to screen print. I plan to incorporate the two mediums together and possibly pin-tuck a screen print or print on top of some embroidery. 

Unit X | Designer Research

During our tutorial last week Louise suggested that my drawings would work best as a strong placement print. I did some research on designers and placement prints to collect ideas on where and how they might be placed, before I start experimenting with my own designs.

I took a liking to three collections in particular; Tom Ford SS14, Holly Fulton Spring 11 and KENZO SS14.

I like these three collections in particular because of the shapes and drapes of the fabrics. Also, Tom Ford and Kenzo are largely black and white in colour, which makes them really relatable to our work.
Tom ford's collection in particular relates well to my concept of bandages with the lines incorporated in the print. I love the drape in the fabrics Holly Fulton used and the structure of the garments in the KENZO collection.

Unit X | Digital Editing

Although we aren't supposed to produce digital prints for this Unit, I still want to be able to play to my strengths. Which is why I am choosing to digitally edit my designs before putting them onto a screen to be screen printed.
I'm not sure whether my drawings would be best as repeat prints or placement prints, so I decided to experiment with both so that I can see the designs full potential before putting it onto a screen.

Reducing to one colour edit

Quick Repeat edit

Experimentation - placing drawings together as placement print

Overall I am happy with the experimentation and development that I have created by taking a digital route. After showing my work to Louise she really took a liking to the design above, which is simply an edit of my original drawings. This would definitely be a strong and effective placement print. Next, I plan on experimenting with ways of engineering prints, possibly through using a projector or pinning paper copies to a mannequin.

Unit X | Visual Research and Drawing

Taking inspiration from my chosen artists, I began to draw from my photographs. Finding media was particularly easy as I only need black, white and grey colors. I started with some basic line drawings with the intention of getting me going and finding a direction to go in. However, my drawings turned out a lot better than I had anticipated and they are visually strong on their own. I particularly like how the bends in the bandage appear slightly three dimensional regardless of it being a completely 2D drawing.

I originally planned to develop my drawings a lot more before I started designing prints from them. However during our group tutorial with Louise and also a Tutorial with Susan, they liked the drawings already and thought they were strong enough to be made into prints as they are. 

From this, I decided to layer and photocopy some of my drawings to see how they might look placed together.

Although I like the layered images I think the drawings might be better on their own or next to eachother rather than layered. When they are overlapped some of the quality of the drawing is lost and becomes a bit too much. However I do really like the two tones of grey together, which happened due to my drawings being on tracing paper. If I was to have these drawings as individual motifs placed together, they could work well being printed in different grey tones.

Unit X | Research and Artist Inspiration

After mind-mapping ideas and doing further research, we decided to use bandages, rope and drape of fabric used in martial arts uniform as a starting point. Bandages are regularly used in several martial arts to wrap around the wrists and ankles for support. Rope is used in a similar way in the underground, illegal side Muay Thai - a form of Thai kickboxing. I think that this is an interesting idea to develop into drawings.
Furthermore, James Long uses different yarns together in order to create their own fabrics, so making our own ropes from various materials could be a good direction to go in.
I began my visual research by taking photographs of loose and wrapped bandages.

During our tutorial with Tom, he said that they do not want us using digital print during this unit. My specialism is digital print so this obviously put me a little out of my comfort zone. Nevertheless I have experience of screen print and I know all of the processes. At first it was daunting but as I develop my ideas with the intention of being screen printed I am more excited to be going into the print room, especially to dye all of my own fabrics.

My group have made a joint Pinterest board so that we can easily share our ideas and show each other what we're pinning. Link is here. While researching I found various artists that caught my eye. They all have a parallel line drawn element to their work which I think would work really well with the bandage concept. These inspirations will also make it easy to keep with the black and white colour palette of our collection.

 

Unit X | Concept and Colour Palette

Although I missed the first week of Unit X due to being on a study trip in New York, myself and Pipp came back and got stuck in straight away. Our group had already chosen the concept of Martial Arts, which I am really excited about as I've never considered it before. I feel that it will be fun to experiment with. We have also chosen to do womenswear. James Long is primarily menswear although they have had womenswear collections in the past which we have all taken a liking to.

From researching James Long, we discovered that he largely uses a darker colour palette and regularly uses Navy. He keeps an edgy look to his collections throughout, and doesn't go overboard with colour. As our concept is martial arts, we aim to use a lot of light, free flowing fabrics and those that have a lot of drape, similar to fabrics used in the uniforms.
James Long's SS13 collection was a little more feminine than his others, with more girlish structure and drapes.

His SS14 collection was a lot more boxy and square, but had a lot of references to sportswear. We decided our aim is to try and create a balance between the two different approaches, and see if we can incorporate both into one collection.

Our group presented the brief ideas to Tom from James Long on monday, and he also seems to like the concept. We had already prepared a dark toned colour scheme with flashes of neon, however he restricted us to a completely grey scale colour palette. At first I thought this might make things easy as choosing colours and dying fabrics is made simpler. Actually, getting a completely grey, black, and white colour scheme to work successfully in fashion is easier said than done. Nevertheless who doesn't like a challenge...
We took our colour scheme from two martial arts images we found while researching.