So yesterday I had a Design tutorial with some of my tutors about my concept and designs. I decided to look into the idea of “Preservation of the Natural World”. Whether it’s animals, food, flowers etc, organisms begin to decompose overtime. I want to explore the idea of capturing and preserving the essence of natural beauty that Mother Nature has to offer. Thankfully the concept was understood. However I was told to steer clear from plastic like fabric that I originally was going to use to make jackets. Instead, I will be looking into fabrics such as silk, lycra, cotton, and neoprene. At the moment, I am potentially deciding on whether or not I should incorporate digitally printed silk as part of my collection. In terms of color palette, I am looking into ivory white, nature brown, and iridescent blue/green. Below are some deign developments I made by using Photoshop: 
Month: January 2015
Baby Dye Dye Dye
So this week was quite a busy week doing some samples. I got to spend some time in the dye room to dye some fabric samples using disperse dyes. Disperse dyes are ideal for synthetic fibres such as polyester and nylon. This water insoluble dye method requires an equation to create the dye solution.
1. Dye { Dry weight of fabric X dye% = Dye power required in grams (g)
_____________________________
100
2. Water { 40 X Dry weight of fabric = amount of water in litters (l)
3. Acetic acid (or Aluminium Sulphate) { DWF X 3 = amount in (g)
________
100
Within this equation, “dye%” depends on the color you wish to mix. It is a fixed rule that black is 8% while all other colors require 5% of the dye powder.
To create the solution, you start off by heating up some water and bringing it to a simmer. Then you add the calculated amount of dye and acetic acid or aluminium sulphate. I started off by sampling with clear vinyl and creating a blue dye solution. First I left the piece of fabric in the dye for 2-3 minutes which gave it a light blue coloring on the transparent fabric. The longer you leave the fabric in the solution, the darker the color will become. The longest I left a sample in was 10min, which was more than enough to give it a nice dark blue. Once I became more comfortable with this particular dye method, I decided to create a dip dye effect. This required me to put in the fabric sample in the solution for 1 minute then slowly pulling it out every minute, until it has been in the solution for a total of 10 min. Surprisingly when I began to experiment with a light weight fish net tulle, the color didn’t change significantly whether I left it in for 2 minutes or even 10 minutes.
Overall I really enjoyed experimenting in the dye room and wish to further develop this technique for my final major project, as the dip dye aesthetic is well suited for my concept.
Beating The January Blues
I reckon most of us have it by now: The January Blues…
As soon as the festivities have passed and all of a sudden not all is calm, not all is bright anymore, it’s back to reality.
However, I decided to embrace the challenges ahead for this new term to distract myself from the post-Christmas blues. This first week back, I started working on my new concept for my final project by gathering relevant images and laying them out on an A3 sketchbook. One of the things that our tutors encourage us last term was to make sure that we were able to visually communicate our chosen concept effectively. So therefore, it is essential for us to have the right kind of images along with well drawn designs on interesting templates.
I decided to explore the concept revolving the preservation of the natural world. First I began gathering images online and created a digital moodboard on Photoshop that would stimulate the creative process. Aesthetically, I looked into this idea of transparent materials encasing/preserving object from the natural world such as flowers, animals, and food. I did some samples by PVC laminating dried flowers onto mesh and will continue to do some more samples throughout the week.
Unfortunately, these last 6 months of university is going to be quite stressful. So therefore I figured that a positive attitude and working on the kind of concept will help me beat the cold winter blues and get me through the rest of the year.
Within the next week or so, I will be posting more updates about the development of my research and samples. In the meantime, below are concept images:
geneveanderson 