Reflection on Deisgn One

I have enjoyed working on this design and was happy with my decision to create this design first, it helped me get into the mind frame and helped me practise my cutting on the stand skills before I started on a challenging piece.

A problem that occurred was that I could not get the darts on the front panel to meet up correctly this was because I forgot to mark placement lines as well as the bust and waist line on the draping pattern. This meant that when the draping was taken off the mannequin and cut up that it became very hard to meet each piece back up the same way. This is something I have learnt from and will remember the problems it caused, meaning that I will not do this again. 

There ended up being quite a lot of problems with the draping and pattern for the decoration on the front of the bodice. After researching the technique of creating this decoration I undertook what I needed to do, but the problem was creating the base to work on top of. 

Below is an image of the piece I managed to drape using the pattern I created. 

The idea is to then machine strips of bias cut fabric onto of this panel to create the pleated look seen in the line drawing.  I have created a sample of this which can be seen within my workbook.

I feel that I have learnt a lot from this project and learnt from areas that I have done wrong for this design to hopefully not do the same in the next design. 

I found it really useful looking back over my research when draping the bodice because I was very unsure as to how the dress should sit on the shoulder because the line drawing of the design has very low shoulders and does not really show how the dress would be warn. I decided to look in the painting sections of the library to find this kind of information.

If I was to create this garment in top fabric then I would place a few bones in the seam allowance to keep the structure straight. I would also consider putting a waistband in the bodice to hold the dress in place.

I am really happy with the outcome of this design. I feel that my cutting on the stand techniques have improved and I am happy with the cut and shapes of the bodice pieces as well as the darts. I found the darts quite challenging to allow them to sit flat but create the elegant curved darts seen on the line drawing. These curved darts will give the elision of a smaller waist.