After finishing the neon bone and adding washers and clock parts, I decided to add a scatter of these under the bone shape on the fabric. I decided not to add more stitches or large sequin shapes on to the fabric as i didnt want to distract too much from the amount of work that had gone on to the bone.

I did still want to make my own sequins using splashes of colour. I used Photoshop to select and layer splashes of dye or paint that had been scanned in along with my drawing sheets and then photocopied this on to acetate. I experimented attaching the sequins together and found the best way would be to pierce each sequin with a  needle and use a tiny little split ring which would still allow the sequins to move. I only wanted the top sequin to be attached to the garment and the rest to hang freely. I also decided to push some of the clock parts through the sequins to tie in all of the different areas of this design. I felt that this brought it all together more as well as still being mix matched.

This is the final finished garment! After playing around with length and composition of the hanging sequins I think the finished design is really strong, works really well and I think this is my favourite design out of them all.

Final Few Days

I can not believe how much embroidery I managed to do in the last few days of my final major project, I even managed to do some dresses in just one day, but staying up till 4am! So I have not really had much time to update my blog and get the rest of my designs up, so I am going to start doing that now!

I mentioned before about struggling with embellishments on my digital fabrics, I felt a bit like that with this design too. The original design was created from mirror imaging one of my detailed drawings of flowers. I then changed the hue and saturation around on Photoshop till I was happy with the colours. I extended one part of the image to look like an abstract spine, so it would fit in more with my bone and fossil theme.

This was the drawing I manipulated on Photoshop.

After testing and sampling different colours I decided to go for a lime/neon green colour with hints of pinks and oranges as the colours worked really well together and fit the design. To pick out detail in the print I sampled sewing turquoise embroidery floss over lines in the petals. It worked quite nicely in the sample but when I came to do it on the final piece it did not work well and I found it too distracting.

What did work well with stitch was picking out the more luminous tones on the darker areas of the design.

 I felt quite lost on what to do with my fabric, but remembered seeing at Indigo trade show in Paris a fashion digital print length that had just been covered in clear sequins and it worked really well from a distance and looked like the sequins were printed or coloured. I started to layer over clear sequins keeping it symmetrical and decided to pick out the middle of the design. I also added tiny holographic purple sequins to bring out the purple dye splats and green crystals around the neckline of where the design would sit.

The design now has over 1000 clear sequins on it!

Continued..

I started to embroider and embellish into the bone, sewing around the edges so it was permanently fixed on using contrasting neon threads. I used contrasting colour to the nudes like greens and blues and then tried to use more neutral colours on the neon pink such as pale pink washers which i sprayed and light beads and sequins. I used chain and embellishments to parts of the bone. I am so happy with the finished design, the washers add a weight to the fabric and the tiny cogs give a quirky twist. Once the garment has been made up I plan to scatter more washers and clock parts around the fabric with french knots, stitches, negative shapes of sequin fabric and home made printed acetate sequins. I'm really excited to continue with this! Also used the super macro setting on my new camera to take these close up shots of the embroidery, I am well impressed with the detail and colour!

Neon Bones

I have used bones and skeletons from the beginning of this project (and my minor) as my main source of visual research, this project I wanted to make them less obvious and abstract them.
I exposed several line drawings of bones I had drawn from the Natural History Museum and screen printed the outlines on to fabric. I started painting in the individual shapes of the bone in clashing and contrasting colours, using neons and nudes. I plan to embroider into it tomorrow.

I used bondaweb to attach it on to my front top shape, hopefully it will sit well when the garment is made up!

One down...

One top shape finished!!! It doesn't look like a lot of work but it takes ages and I still would rather embroider for hours than print or do machine embroidery. I thought I would have so much more done by now but this week I met up with friends who I have not seen for months, went to see Jimmy Carr last night, which was amazing and he wished me luck in the 'rag trade' and took up a lot of time making folders, business cards and so on for my professional portfolio, which needs to be handed in on the 28th! but yes, anyway here is one complete shape, that just needs making up into a garment!

Embroidery Samples

Taking inspiration from fossil shapes I have been experimenting 'mix match' embroidery, clashing colours, layers of materials and 3d embroidery.