Deconstruct that knit

When we were first presented with this idea of using and recycling old garments to create a whole new piece it scared me a little; jumping into a project which seemed so odd to me. At first I did struggle a little with my concept, but once I had enough research my confidence grew a tad bit more. I decided to look at ruins and poverty which can be slightly obvious but it worked for me, and once I got into the flow I begun to really love this project.

The first thing we were to do was bring in a bunch of unwanted clothing to morph and manipulate on the stand. At first I wanted to work with denim, something out of my comfort zone but when I couldn't get hold of any I naturally gravitated towards knit. With my knits I created as many shapes on the form as possible to help me with the design process after. 

As well as using the stand for design development I also created some garment ideas through collaging. This was done by cutting bits from magazines as well as using photocopies of the knits I brought in to create two sets of collages which I thoroughly enjoyed doing and found them successful as they helped hugely with the design process of my final piece.

Using my knits I created some samples building up textures using acrylic paint, stitching, and torn photographs of buildings. With the samples I tried to create landscapes with the paint as well as with the stitching; I tried to keep a mix of clear landscapes and ruined stitches in the samples. Creating these samples make the project work better as a textile and fashion mix because I tried to explore both aspects. 

Creating my final piece came quite naturally as my ideas all lead up to creating a shredded cape like piece as I cut up the different coloured knits into squares and rectangles to which I then stitched together. Keeping in mind the samples I created before I tried to add paint onto the top half of my garment but it didn't look as great as I had imagined therefore at the photo shoot I decided on capturing the garment inside out because the paint nearly ruined the piece, plus i preferred how it looked inside out because looked more rough which suited my theme perfectly.

The photo shoot was one of my favourite parts because I loved the scenery so much that it almost just pulled the whole project together and it finally made sense. I done this shoot in my aunts back garden as the previous tenants left it extremely messy like a dump with mattresses and burnt trolleys about, it was a perfect opportunity and a great experience. 

All in all I would say that this project was maybe my favourite out of all the projects because I enjoyed all the different aspects of the projects from researching, working on the stand, sampling, designing, making the garment, photography and video. All of it was a great challenge for especially because I didn't like the concept of this project in the beginning, but I massively enjoyed the whole project and wouldn't change anything I done as I feel everything worked out great for my concept.