When creating my garment, especially the printing I wasn’t as nervous to create as I knew exactly what I was doing as from the testing of the fabrics before I knew that the pigment would be successful and making the garment from my toile’s such as the problem solving I have already resolved. The main thing that I was really worried about was the knit for the top that I wanted to create and the ruching on the shirt. For the knit I was worried because I came across the mistake of undermining the stretch in the knit that I had created. It was a lot more stretchy and heavy then the knit that I had used to make my toile so I had to fit it around my own body with the help of my mum. Having two pieces the back and the front I clipped and finally pinned how tight I wanted the knit to be on me. I wanted the knit to be tight so I thought that it would be best to place in the zip first and then try on and pin it so I could see exactly how tight it was going to be. As the knit was so stretchy I didn’t need to put darts in as it fitted around the curves of the body, fine. With the print I was worried that if you stretched it to much that you would be able to see the white knit underneath but you couldn’t. For the shirt, when I made my toile I made it out of calico because I wanted to see the silhouette and the measurements of the shirt how big it was going to be. I knew the success of the ruching as I tried it on a light fabric before. I had to make sure that each of the measurements between each line of ruching was the same so that when the ruching brought the shirt in and upwards that it would still be the same length at the bottom of the shirt and in the sleeves. Having this trouble with the shorts on my first toile but having problem solved it with the second pair I was quite confident that it will be okay. Another problem that I faced was sewing in the sticks onto the skirt. Having used calico before it was quite easy for the fabric to stand in place, whereas using a polyester satin its a more slippery fabric which is hard to keep in place. Having to keep the fabric still with the pins and making it work with the sewing machine I had to have the needle at the side at the beginning but soon realised that the needle was going off the edge of the folded fabric so I had to move it to the centre so that it could still sew the folded edge of the fabric. The sticks where also very hard to hold so I had to have my mum feeding it through while I was so sewing which was a challenge in itself. However, I really loved the overall look of the garment, I made sure that the garments look finished professionally and that every detail was shown. If I was to do it again differently I would make sure that I have more wool with me because when I was knitting I didn’t have enough and it kept coming off the needles leaving me to add on the extra part so there is a line in the back. Also with the extra yarn I could of finished off the top part of the back.
Alice's Fashion and Textiles Blog 