The White Project

My first University project is entitled 'The White Project' due to only being able to use white fabrics when creating our final garment.
I just wanted to share with you all a few snap-shots from my sketchbook and my first pattern draft for my garment.
It's a work in progress..

The project began with a trip to Creswell Crags, a beautiful limestone gorge filled with caves. Stone tools and remains of animals have been found within the caves which archaeologists have dated back to the last Ice Age between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago.
This sparked off thoughts of future Ice Ages and how we would have to adapt to survive.

I started looking into futurism and the futurist movement - I got to watch a heck of a lot of films, primarily Blade Runner and Metropolis for their take on the shiny, modern future we may find ourselves in one day.

The still seen within my sketchbook was taken from Blade Runner. For those of you who haven't seen it - it's a wonderful 80's film, directed by Ridley Scott starring Harrison Ford set in the future. Man has developed the technology to create replicant human clones used to serve in colonies outside Earth. Each replicant has a fixed lifespan. Set in LA in 2019 Deckard (Ford) is a 'Blade Runner' a specialist cop who is tasked to terminate replicants who have left the other-worldly colonies and have found their way back to Earth.

The still above features character 'Rachael' in her trade-mark 40's style shoulder padded, tailored jacket. This then developed into looking at creating an over-sized sleeve changing the regular silhouette into something more strong and dominating.

There was a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing in regards to fabric choice.
After much thought, I decided to have a go at working with Leatherette. Leather has been used for centuries as a form of protective fabric which whilst on the topic of creating a strong shoulder for dominance fits perfectly with the need for survival - would keep the wearer warm, dry and due to it being a thick fabric would hold it's shape nicely.

I also wanted to add extra structure to the shoulder. Shoulder pads are brilliant, but I wanted something that would stand it's own - I went for plastic coated steel corset boning (7mm thickness).

There are/were a lot more processes, developments and experimentation's that got me to my final, but here it is!
I intend on making a jacket/coat. I've been working on drafting a pattern for the front right side of the garment for the past couple of days and I've finally got the in's and out's sorted.

There is a lot of masking tape and bits pinned together until I get the pattern pieces drawn out this evening. The front right consists of two panels
1st - Centre front panel that cuts down into the bust and rounds at the bottom to create the scooping as seen on the drawing above. There is a small bust dart to give shape and fit to the garment.
2nd - This panel counts as a side-seam too. It rounds out to the side encompassing a previous sketch based on changing the silhouette and also being functional (all will be reveled in another post at a later date!)

It's a long way off being finished yet, but I am aiming to have it toiled by the end of next week - the problem solving bit is my favourite ;) and completed with lining and details in my chosen fabric in three weeks time!

Please keep popping back to track my progress for this project!!

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Big loves,
Samantha
xo