Sampling unit:
Ordered Opposites: Rural/Urban: Hard/Soft
Evaluation of Project 2:

In past projects, I have found a weakness in not carrying out appropriate and on-going research. In this project I feel I have embraced my own challenge of conducting thorough research using myriad techniques and materials. I have made relevant connections between my research and practice, for example:

I took this photograph of a building in Spinningfields, Manchester and looked solely at the structure of the building:

After investigating the structure of the building in my sketchbook, I created this piece of development to begin thinking of how I could use my materials to re-create the forms.

I am happy with this as my first 3D Construction sample, as I felt I carried out good research, development of ideas and then the final idea, using quite literal thinking, to create a hard & soft themed garment.

I always make sure I use context in my work, to give my samples a meaning beyond aesthetics. A good example of this is my “Filing Cabinet” piece. On my walk through Manchester, in which I set out to find form and structure in the city, I discovered the “Filing Cabinet” building:

This image inspired me straight away with the shapes and I started thinking of different ways to present my ideas:

I wanted to come up with a more lateral design compared to my last sample, so played with my ideas, leading to this garment design:

In an effort to maintain my Hard & Soft theme, I created the body of the garment to have a soft, sleek bottom seam, to contrast the square shapes. This leads to my next design, and quite an important self- discovery- my mark making techniques. During tutorials my tutor has pointed out that my work is very similar to that of a print students, a workshop I didn’t think to do as I thought I was a more constructive designer. However, in our Drawing Day task, we created our own brushes and mark makers. I used visual images from my sketchbook and experimented using my mark makers, oil paints, acrylic paints and charcoal. This task really inspired me and lead to me developing my marks in to 3D samples. Here is one example:

I took this photo during a walk through Blanchland in Northumberland during the Christmas Holidays, using this image, I created this mark making during the workshop:

I then went on to create a 3D sample using the "Filing Cabinet" idea:

I feel that this work further proves my lateral thinking ability, as I have taken a visual source and developed it in a non-conventional way. This is also my risk-taking piece, because instead of creating a sample using calico and chicken wire to enable structure, I used advice from tutorials, as well as advice from the Drawing Day, and created my own print, to apply to my development from “The Filing Cabinet” piece.

Throughout this project, I believe I have used my time efficiently. During the knit workshop I was still a little weary about making connections between my research and practice, because I carried out a lot of visual and contextual research over weekends and the christmas holidays, so I found it difficult to narrow down ideas.

Although I created plenty of samples with developed colour themes, I didn’t feel any of them were very final to the point of being able to imagine them as a garment, however enjoyed making the sample boards- which could eventually lead to more developed samples if I went back to them.

This allowed me to do my research a little differently in the 2nd part of the project, because I was doing 3D Construction I knew that I should just begin my looking at form and structure. I believe the last month of the project went quite well, as I had planned to create 2 or 3 quality samples, with well developed connections between my research, my hard & soft theme, my materials, workshops and practice.