Reflection

Overall, throughout this process I feel I learnt a lot about the way in which I work, how the outside world works and what I need to do to improve. Throughout the project, I feel I have engaged well with other makers through tutorials and presentations. I feel in these sessions I was able to look at other peoples work and then all give feedback on ideas with how to improve. Looking at other peoples work was helpful because it showed me the wide range of ideas that everyone had and taught me to perhaps develop my thinking in this. I also feel the interim crit we had was a really helpful way of engaging with others as we had to fill out forms I groups about each other’s work giving positive feedback and ways in which to improve.

Throughout the professional lectures I feel I learnt about many different ways in which you can use your work in the professional world. For example, this could be through instillation projects or through craft fairs. It definitely was useful as it broadened my knowledge on what you could do after uni.

I feel that the most challenging aspect of the unit was probably my ideas simply because I kept leaping from one idea to another which didn’t give me a enough chance to develop my ideas further. I feel that in the future, if I stick with an idea I would get much more out of it as I can spend more time developing ideas. I also found the presentations quite challenging. I don’t think of myself as a very confident public speaker therefore struggled a bit when it came to doing this.

I think that the most practical skill I have developed is how my print designs laid out on the fabric. For example, I am quite used to just doing repeated patterns on a large scale piece of cloth however as I was designing for a scarf I needed to make sure that I printed my layout right on both end of the scarf and that it would look good and in the tight place when actually worn.

In my work, I identify my drawing and design work as a key strength. I feel I am very good at drawing from my images and can produce really detailed designs for something and then using them in repeat. However, I feel something I could then improve on is my development from this stage. I feel that as my design work is good I need to push myself to then develop these on further and produce designs that are even more detailed.

I feel that after doing unit x, some of the experiences have impacted my thoughts on final year. For example, I did think that my work was very interior based before doing this project however throughout doing it and researching into it I have found myself liking the idea of printing for fashion. It has also given me a wider range of knowledge about the professional world and making my work look professional.

Overall, I feel that my future direction lies in designing for either an interior or fashion market, producing designs that could be used in a professional context. I can begin to prepare for this by doing lots of market research into these areas and seeing exactly where I think my work lies. I feel over the project I have worked hard in my work and produced some realy good outcomes in response to the project. I feel overall improvements would be to look more into my inspiration ideas and also work more into developing ideas.

This image sums up my overall experience as it shows my journey throughout the project from

 start to end.

Refinements and Conclusions

 

After printing in the print room I editing my scarf aking sure all the edges looked good and that they had a professional look about them. I then took some images of my scarf being worn so I got an idea of what it would look like worn on:

Overall I am really happy with how they look worn and think they will bring something new and exciting to the gift shop.

Overall I feel that one strength in my proposal of work is that scarves are a very popular product that are always selling in many shops. Particularly in the National trust shop, a lot of older wome will visit and be drawn to the scarves. I feel that my floral design is also a big strength because flowers are a very popular and well known design used in fashion and appeal to many people. I also think the colours are choosen well beause they will stand out in the gift shp and are also very appealing. I feel that a weakness in my proposal would be that I think I could have made my designs look more proffesional.

My proposal is appropriate for the context it was developed in because I wanted to make sure it would fit in with the Handmade in Britain section. I made sure I kept going back to my research and making sure it would fit in with my context of the gift shop.

I feel my work does sit alongside well in the professional field however I do also fee I could improve on this. When I researched into other hand made print designs they were quite similar to how mine looked. However I think I could have made my deigns look more professial by making sure there were no ink mistakes and that I took more time when printing the designs.

When it came to presenting my work at the final presentation I feel it went quite well however it could have also gone better. I made sure I described each step of my work through my boards and explained it as much as I could. Here is a photo of my boards in the presentation room:

Overal there are some ways I would have tackled the project differently. Firstly, I woud have looked more into the gardens and flowers and tried to have devloped my ideas further. Secondly, I would have made sure I stuck to one idea instead of changing all the time as then I would have had more time to develop my work.

Final Idea

After experimenting with my ideas and colour I decided to choose these 4 images (2 on each scarf) and play around with repeating them and seeing how they would sit on a scarf.

I practised lots of different ways of how I could show my designs on a scarf using thumbnail designs. This enabled me to roughly draw out different ideas in small scale and see the layout of where each design would go.
In the end I went ahead with the idea that at one end of the scarf I would have my design repeated half way up, and then at the other end I wanted to print the detail zoomed up. What inspired me to do this sort of ida were the designs that Sprouted Design company produce. i liked how they had a very simple yet striking image at the end of the scarf.

These are the 2 designs I want to use for one scarf design. I want to repeat the flower on one side of the scarf and then have the zoomed in detailed image on the other end.

Below is created some templates and played around with different ways the flower could repeat. I felt this one was most effective because it fit in well together and the repeat was interesting instead of just doing it side by side.

I then went into the print room using the colours I had experimeted with and created a repeat pattern on one end of the scarf and then a print of the detail zoomed in. I made sure the zoomed detail was the same colour as the detail on the flowers so it fit together and contrasted off each other.

Zoomed detail at one end of the scarf

Repeated flowers at the other end

For my second scarf design I picked these 2 designs to display on a scarf:

Again, I have played around with the repeat of the design. I quite liked the idea of rotating the design upside down on each line to make it fit in together. As the design was a triangle shape this made it much easier to repeat.

I then went into the print room and printed my designs out in a similar way to my previous design. I did this to make it look more like a collection.

Zoomed detail at one end of the scarf

                                          Repeated flowers at the other end of the scarf

Overall I am really happy with these designs. I think the fabric was a really good choice because it shows the design off well. I really like how the colours on both my designs all fit together as a whole quite well. I think these designs are a really simple yet effective way of showing the detail on the flowers.

Colour Way

When thinking about my colour way my first thoughts were that I wanted it to be quite simple and fit in with the neutral and duck egg coluors of the National Trust Gift Shop. However, after working with flowers and the bold bright colours they bring, I have decided to use a bit of colour in my final designs. To work out what colours I want to use I have been researching into colour trends, looking at what colours are in for 2013 spring/summer.

The colours above are the sorts of colours that are in for the Spring and Summer. Emerald being a main one in particular. When I look at this the first colours that stand out for me are the purples and red/prages, as they are very rich colours. I do also want to keep in mind that as well as using bold colours I also want some of them to be quite suttle to make sure thet fit in with the National Trust image.

I think using the orange, red  and pinks in different shades would be a good selection of colours because they will stand and appeal customers instantly.

I experimented using these ain colours by painting them together and seeing how they would work together.

Material Testing

I decided to do some material testing into the sort of fabric I want to print onto. From looking back at my market resarch I know I want to look into using silk because it was a very popular fabric in the shop. I also think silk is very appealing to my age group I am designing for because its a very expensive and rich looking fabric.

I first tested doing a few prints onto a very thin type of silk to see if it was the right sort of fabric. I decided to use any colour as I was sipy testing what works best on the fabric. The design I used to test on fabric I didnt actually end up using in my final ideas however it was simply used to do samples with.




















When pritning onto this fabric I found it quite challenging because its such a thin fabric its very hard to keep flat and ink smudges very easily. However the final finished look of the fabric is really nice because it flows really nicely and is a very soft material.

I then tried printing onto a fabric called Silk Satin which is a bit thicker than the last fabric. I found this was a lot easier to print onto and had a really nice finish to it:

I have decided to go ahead with this material because the overall finish looks very professional, expensive and would definitely appeal to customers. The material is also very delicate and flows nicely when worn.

Ideas Development

I have choosen some images from my ideas that I feel are the best ones that I want to develop further into a design I can print with. The drawings below are a few of the designs that I have choosen i want to take further and develop with.

What I notice straight away about these designs are how detailed and full of pattern they are. I decided to go back to what drew my attention to them in the first pace and that was the detail. I therefore decided to zoom in on some of the patterned areas and draw them larger to really focus on the detail and contrast it to the actual flower design in normal focus.

Going back to a similar method I used in my ideas section, I decided to blow watercolour threw a straw to create that dispersed look of texture in the zoomed up images.

 

Below I have done the same and used different techniques to create the zoomed up image.

I think this would look really effective on a scarf design if you had one image repeated on one side of the scarf and then a zoomed in version on the other. It will draw attention to the design and make it link together.

Ideas Conclusion

Overall, my ideas have been a huge factor in what I actually want to produce and what works best. I tried lots of different drawing techniques that I could potentially use and develop onto a scarf. When I started to experiment a few of my background ideas onto fabric, I found that this showed me the sort of direction I should go in and the technique/style I should use because a few of my techniques I wanted to use didn't come out very well when tested onto fabric.
Overall, I want to use the textured, neat style of drawing flowers, really focusing on the detail of the flower and developing this further to create designs onto scarves. I think this style of drawing is very appealing to the older generation but can also appeal to anyone that may walk into the gift shop. I want to make sure my designs are bold, stand out and give something new and exciting to the shop.

Ideas

I firstly started my ideas/design work by drawing from my photos just as a starting point and see what sort of styles of drawing could be suitable. I tried different ways of drawing the flowers - for example, continuous line, without looking at the page.



This is one exmaple of my drawn work from a photo. I wanted to use a technique Nikki Strange used and mirror the image onto the other side to see what it would look like. I tihnk its come out really well and is a really effective way to make a design look more interesting.

This is an example of some drawings I have done using the techniques I was talking about above. There is a neat version, continuous line and drawing without looking.

I also wanted to create some drawings that were more textured and detailed, focusing a lot on the pattern and markings of the flowers.

Below are some continous line drawings I have drawn from looking at the photo below. I think this technique is really effective because its unique and interesting to look at. I think these designs would work well on a scarf either as one image or repeated.

I think this image above works really well and would look effective just as one print at the bottom of a scarf.

I also started experimenting with different background ideas using watercolours to mix together a blend of colours and then draw some designs on top. This is all just to give me some inspiration and ideas:

The image above and below have been created through splashing water colours onto the page and blowing through a straw to blend the colours.

 

I used water colours to create my own background and then painted the flowers over the top. I wanted to make sure the foreground was bold and bright so it contrasted against the background.

This last image below is a photograph I took. I made my own watercolour background just like the images above and then held it up against the light with an photograph of some flowers. I thought the result came out really well as you can vaguely see the flowers coming through the paper. I then drew over the top of this in a bold colour as I wanted to create a similar effect to Nikki Strange's work.

 



After looking at Paul Smiths designs, I wanted to create an image of flowers that was quite out of focus and to some people wouldn’t look like flowers. I came up with an idea of wetting the paper page and then printing the photo onto it simply by laying the photo onto the wet paper and pressing down. I found this created a really interesting and effective look therefore could be ideal for a background on a scarf.

The photo above is the original photo I took at Wisley Gardens. Below is the image printed onto paper. This was produced by spreading water over the paper and placing the photo face down onto the wet paper. I also think the image two down looks really effective. This is the photo after its had water on it.

 Above is the original photo that I took and above that is the print version and photograph afterwards.



The original photo is at the top and my printed version and photograph after are underneath. Overall, I think this is a really effective way of printing a photo because the image and colour comes out quite suttle. 

I then wanted to take this idea further and try doing the same method but onto fabric to see if it had the same effect. I have tested this out onto a cotton fabric however I want to use some silk next time as its a common fabric used to make scarfs particularly in the National Trust shop. 

Below is the flower image printed onto cotton fabric using the same technique as above. I would like to try this onto silk though as the material fits in more with my target group.

 

Again, below  is the photo, photo afterwards and the photo printed onto cotton fabric. I like this image because the colours have blended together to create a pink colour even though it's not in the original image. Again I would like to use silk as it will give a more expensive look, fitting in with my target group.

I think this looks really effective as a background colour because it enables me to add a design over the top and it also fits in with my target group. As I am used using a lot of colour in my work I think this is an effective way to still use that colour however toning it down so it fits in with the National Trust gift shop. At my interim crit my tutor pointed out that she liked how parts of the image had worn away on the photo after it has had water on it. I do also like this however I'm not sure how it would fit in with the National Trust theme.  

However, after trying to experiment this technique onto silk I found it didnt come out as well as I predicted. I found this quite a dissapointment because it came out looking really effective on cotton. When I printed it onto the silk it slightly ruined the image and it also didnt come out looking very good.