15th - 19th April - Experiments!!

Easter

Over Easter I wanted to purely focus on annotating all my research the first week so that the second week I could visit the shops and places I needed to got to for my primary research.

Annotating my research to quite a long time and was time consuming but I learnt a lot through this process about the traditional garments which will be beneficial to my assignment. This will also help me create responses and design ideas further into the process.

The second week I visited a store in London called the Highland store to gather primary research and drawings. I got a lot of photos of different tartans I saw which will help me in my experiments, I had obviously seen these before online but was really beneficial to see them in person as the colors where shown different to online photos. There also was outfits on mannequins using tartan so I decided to draw these, I also luckily found a mannequin in a proper kilt!

i then went to visit a Bavarian shop to see traditional dirndls but when we got there it was the offices to the shop which wasn't clear at all on their website! As I didn't have nay drawings of these dirndls I went to my Omi who had a dirndl from my aunties childhood! I then took photos and drawings of these. I than decided to create drawings from movies that wore traditional dirndls such as sound of music, as these went so well I also decided to do this for traditional kilts so I drew from a movie called Braveheart and a tv series called "Men in kilts".

Go check out my tiktok to see my trip to London!

My Tiktok

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This week I was starting my experiments, I wanted to start by testing out traditional dirndl sleeves. There are two different types of sleeves they use, cap sleeves and three quarter length sleeves. I first created a pattern for these and started to look at how they traditionally design these, most of them have add elastic near to the end of the sleeves which gives a subtle flare to the ends. I experimented using this concept with strip elastic and then shirring elastic, I really enjoyed how these came out and I definitely want to use elastic in my final design. I then looked at adding lace to the ends as this is another design detailing they use on the dirndl sleeves. I also really liked how this came out but would like to experiments with lighter fabric as I think it will give a more feminine look.

I then went onto look at different dirndl bodice and blouse neckline such as square neck and sweetheart shape overall I prefer the square neck look as this gave a more traditional feel to the bodice rather than costume look.

I then looked into pleats and adding these into circle skirts. I started off my making a mini pattern for a full circle skirt and half a circle skirt, which I quickly realized I liked the look of the full circle skirt the best. I then experimented with both of these and adding in knife pleats to the back of the skirts to act like a kilt. with the combination of the circle skirt and pleats this is clashing the two heritages together.

I then moved onto experimenting with screen printing and paints to create my own tartan patterns in the aim to hopefully use them within my designs. Overall I do like how the colors came out with these experiments but I'm not sure if I fully like the shapes created. As I wanted this final design to look like the traditional garments I'm not sure if ill use my patterns I have created because they look very modern.

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