For the final garment i decided to try and remake my dress 2, i choose nicer fabrics because i felt they were a bit of a garish colour, so i went to something more wearable. 

Dress 2's Yoke was far to small and when i was sewing in the lining it made it the tiniest part to attach so it didn't really work that well because you could see the underneath fabric coming through, this time i made it a lot bigger so it would fit better and i would be able to attach the underneath fabric and hid it in the lining and floral pattern fabric, i lined the fabric a lot better this time and even added a pete pan collar for a cutsey effect. I lined the underneath of the collar so it looked more professional and pressed it flat.

I used a georgette fabric instead of the chiffon like dress number 2, i preferred the fabric as it was a little heavier so it made it easier to gather and gave a nicer effect.

Fall/ Winter 2011/ 2012 collections by Giambattista Vally, DKNY, Louis Vuitton


I made sure the tensions was also better than dress number 2 as it gathered in places especially round the neckline, when i was attaching the lining, this time it worked a lot better and putting snips in also helped. 

For our 3rd pair of trousers we used a pin stripe suiting fabric, it was an okay fabric to use however it reminded me of work wear so it was difficult to do anything other than that with the style of fabric. All the other trousers i have made have been of a skinny fit so i wanted these to be flared.

I used the a basic trouser pattern and added to the edges to make them flared, however something went wrong along the way, and there were fare to big on the front half so it made them look a bit funny, i put in a zip however if i were to do it agin i would probably like to learn how to put a proper fly zip in, as i think that would give them a more work wear look like i intended. The waistband again is something in need to work and i think it probably needed some interfacing to make it more structured.

The fabric was quite cheap and a lot of things stuck to it, so i think i would use something a bit more expensive next time so bits of fluff didn't always stick to it.

Bill Blass S/S02 used pinstripe suits for womenswear, i like the effect and it seems very masculine but also feminine at the same time, i guess that was the look i was going for when creating the trousers, they had an androgyny feel,

For our 3rd dress we choose a fabric that was like neoprene. It was a great fabric to work with as i found out because i liked the fact that it had a shiny and matte side i wanted to use both sides, once i had cut out the different strips i began to sew and found when sewing on the shiny side it would slip so much on the machine that it would make the strip a lot bigger than the matte strip above it.

It did this also along the neckline when i was trying to hem it, that it made a obvious pleat it then fabric, it also did this along the sleeves and again a pleat went into it, if i were to do it again i would use a teflon foot was it wouldn't let the fabric stick and i would also use a much longer zip because i thought the fabric would due more stretchy than it actually was.

I liked the sizing of all the panels i think that they made the garment look like it could be wearable of it wasn't for the mistakes with the fabric slipping.

Neoprene collection by Julian Louie S/S09 i liked how they had also uses the shiny see of neoprene which inspired me to use the shiny and matte sides and also how there were different panels to make up the garment.

For the 3rd Skirt we used the fabric Jersey, it is a difficult fabric to use because of how stretchy it is, it was best to over lock the seams together rather than straight stitch them because if you pull the jersey to hard the stitches rip.

The jersey was stripped so i wanted to use it to take advantage of this by making panels of the stripes go in different directions. I used a pencil skirt pattern, however i made it smaller as i know jersey fits to the body and i wanted to make sure it would be tight. I then drew 3 different panels into the pattern and once i pinned them to the jersey i pinned them in different directions. I decided it didn't really need a zip or anything because it is so stretchy you could get it over anything.

It was difficult to sew because it stretches so much, so in parts it looks slightly gathered which it should be. If i were to do it again i would make the waistband with a heavier fabric because the jersey just pulled and stretched so it didn't really work very well.

I think jersey is a too hard fabric to use, it needs to be a very basic shape, like t shirts where there are only two parts to it.

          Christopher Kane A/W11 used lace throughout the collection, i liked the fact that some were made purely form lace and others had inserts, which inspired me for my trousers.

For my second pair of trousers we had lace fabric, and when i thought about lace trousers i didn't think that they would work very well so i decided to incorporate the lace with another fabric so they would be more wearable. I decided to make some quite formal trouser with lace panels up the inside and outside of the leg to give them an edge.
The trouser were quite small when i tried them on, so i think it was something to do with editing the pattern because i wanted them to be a skinny fit, i made the pattern smaller which i think made them to small.
I think they worked better than some of me previous garments because i have learnt how to properly put a zip in and also gained experience about waistbands. I used some of the left over interfacing from my skirt 2 to create a waistband which would be stiff and much more like a waistband. I feel that it worked well using that.

Waistband, only problem i didn't cut enough fabric to cover the interfacing but it made the band a lot easier to work with because it was stiffer.

The neckline where it gathered and even though i snipped at it, it still didn't loosen so i think the tension was wrong on my machine and caused it to do this.

Invisible zip

The outside stitching because the yoke was too thin to fit all the gather into the lining so that it wouldn't be seen.

I had trouble with working out how to make the whole of the yoke all lined so that you couldn't see any of the raw edges once i'd done everything lined it left me with the top which i could sew up without not being able to turn it the right way again

Fendi A/W2006

Luella s/s 2003

Micheal Kors s/s 2003

Designers that have used yokes in parts of there designs.

For the second dress we were given chiffon, which is known to be a difficult fabric to work with so i didn't want to do anything too complicated. I like the way chiffon looks when it has been gathered so i decided to just cut the chiffon into 2 big rectangular pieces to gather them and make a yoke for it to be attached to. Because chiffon would be very difficult to use to make a yoke, i decided to get an easier fabric to work with, i used a cotton and bought lining to go underneath, i found it difficult to line the fabric and especially on the neckline where it kept gathering, i made snips in it to loosen it but i think it was the tension on the machine that made it have a slight gather in the end.

I also didn't know how to completely make the raw edges of the yoke go into all the lining so that everything would be neat, also when attaching the chiffon bottom half, because the yoke was small it meant i couldn't put it inside of the lining and the cotton, so you could see the stitching on the outside which wasn't what i wanted.

After my first attempt of putting an invisible zip in my first skirt i attempted it again using the right foot on the machine and it worked out really well and was actually invisible. However once i put the skirt on the model and zipped it up, the zip broke i think it was because the skirt was small fitted so it was difficult to get the zip up and we tugged on it to hard.

Overall i think my second skirt worked out a lot better than the first because i understood the places i had gone wrong the first time.

http://www.sewbox.co.uk/blog/235/how-to-sew/a-beginners-guide-to-interfacing/

I wanted to learn more about interfacing and how it can be used and what fabrics its best for etc and found this blog which was useful on giving information about it.

For our second skirt we had to use interfacing, which was a difficult fabric to work with because you couldn't press it however i tried to use it to my advantage by making a peplum skirt and because interfacing stiffens fabric it meant the peplum worked well. The only problem i had with the peplum was that the fabric stared to fray and i thought with using interfacing it wouldn't.

David Koma uses Peplums in a lot of his work, i think from looking at his work inspired me to make a peplum to create a peplum i just made a semi circle on pattern paper and then cut round the fabric and cut a smaller whole in the centre so it would form a ruffle

The peplum i created, it started to fray on the edges which i thought wouldn't happen due to the interfacing but for some reason it did.

I used the basic skirt block because the first skirt i made i didn't use a pattern, but i took the pattern in because i wanted it to be more fitted and towards the bottom of the pattern instead of being an a- line skirt, i wanted it to be a pencil skirt, i put two darts on the front and 4 on the back to create the fitted effect.