Thursday 19 April 2012

Positioning Problems

After finally getting our fabric we headed into uni in the afternoon to start to cut out our patterns.

We planned out where to position our pattern pieces (I will put these drawings on a later post) not realising about how to fold our fabric. We were planning on positioning our back panel on the fold horizontally (not folding the fabric selvedge to selvedge) Then Graham informed us that if our fabric had a nap then half the back would be a different colour to the other half. For example on velvet that has a large pile, the velvet will have different tones at different angles. Therefore all the pattern pieces must face the same way. He said to really look at the fabric and see if this applies to the silk. Our problem is that the back panel is too wide by about 10cm to fit it on the fabric with the selvedges folded together.


We put the fabric onto a stand and folded it so that on one side the weft is facing down and the other the warp is. We really looked to see if the fabrics looked different which we found quite hard. On this picture the 2 sides look the same but we are concerned that we would cut it out, pleat it and then you would be able to tell and there is obviously no going back once we have cut it.

I do also have some concerns with regards to the fabric. It is a beautiful silk but when you hold all five metres in a bundle you realise how heavy it is. I am therefore further concerned that this gown is going to be no lighter than the original and therefore not comply to the brief of making a lightweight summer robe. I think that without using a habotai or ridiculously lightweight silk, the robe could not be made much lighter than the original cotton robe and if we would have done this the Mayor would have been blown away on a blistery summers day! 

Abi is going on work experience for the next week and so we have had to postpone the making of the gown. Over this week I am going to draw try and find a solution to our nap problem by drawing more pattern diagrams and I am going to do further research into the context of the gown. 

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