Witchcraft

For the begining of this project I read the book Witchcraft by Sophie Cornish for contextual knowledge.  Through this book I discovered the what the religion is all about and the meaning of the Pentagram and the five elements.  I created an initial moodboard featuring different imagery linking to Witchcraft.  I have explored many different artist my favourites and most inspiring being Adrienne Rozzi and Mina Sewell Mancuso. 

I have created a range of fashion illustrations using more than 3 different types of media.  This includes fine liners, colouring pencils and charcoal. I used little watercolour for this project as it is a form of media which I have had a lot of expierience using and I wanted to improve on my detailed drawing using fine liner.  I also wanted to create fashion illustration's with colouring pencil as I havnt had much expierience using this media.  I feel that throughout this project I have improved on my drawing skills and using these types of media.  A prime example of this is the hands I've drawn and embroidered.

I visited Glasonbury for primary research where I found a range of different garments I could take inspiration from. I was most inspired by the use of the velvet fabric so decided to use that within my designs.  I also liked the angular collar and combined this idea with Mancuso's embroidery to create my own. 

To decide on what styles of garments I was going to make, I created a survey which thirty people took.  Through this survey I decided what I needed to include on my garments as well as the target market for my brand.

Considering I have had little expierience making garments, I am happy with how they look.  I made my own patterns for my garments and collars.  I found working with velvet particulary difficult as it was strechy and when sewing had a tendancy to move around.  If I could improve on my velvet two piece I would make sure the nip of the fabric is in the same direction on the garments as I didn't think to check this when cutting the pattern pieces.

The voile from my bodycon skirt was inspired by YSL's collection I studied as they used a lot of light flowy fabrics.  I am happy with the appearance of this skirt but it unfortunatley didn't fit my model so I couldn't include it in my photo shoot.  This was due to me not pulling the elastic enough whenattaching the voile.  To improve on this garment I would make sure I stretch the elastic enough so it doesn't shrink in size as much.

My final embroidery pieces feature machine, back stitch and satin stich.  These were my most favourite stitches to work with when producing samples.  My white collar features a backstitch motif of hands releasing fire.  This relates to my palmistry research as people can be defined as the fire element depending on their hand type.  I have also created a lot of hand samples in my work and vastly improved my skill in drawing/sewing them.  To develop this collar, I could of had the fire hands facing down towards the centre of the collar and then machine embroidered flames coming off the collar onto soluble fabric.

The collar with various eyes is my favourite embroidery outcome as it's colourful and compliments my garments really well.  I found the satin stitch was very time consuming but produced a visually engaging collar.

My machine embroidery outcome is my pop up shop sign.  I used a heat gun to stick the letters onto white mountboard to make the letters pop out.  I feel this sign will be a great asset to my exhibition as its a innovative way to produce my logo.  To develop this outcome, I would mount the logo onto perspex.  This was my initial plan but unfortunatley I don't have a facilities to cut down perspex to size.

Overall I really enjoyed exploring the different aspects of witchcraft and creating all these outcomes.  I found it interesting discovering all the different retailers which have occult alternative styles.  If I could do this project again, I would make prototypes before my final pieces to ensure my stitching is perfect.