Design School projects – Balcony Scene
In the efforts to clean up some of my sewing and crafting area, I’m going through a bunch of my old projects from Design School. I’m going to end up pitching the old posters into the recycling bin (because they’re large, and I need the case I’ve been storing them in for other things) but I thought I’d take a moment to go through them, take a few photos for the memories… and why not share some of them here too?
Now… my skill set going into Design School was construction. I got pretty good at drafting and tailoring as well, and even got pretty good at doing spec drawings (the line drawings that show you what the garment will ACTUALLY look like, to scale). However, I didn’t go into Design School being a great illustrator, and while I got BETTER while I was there, it was still always something I struggled with. There were so many GREAT artists in my program… I was not one of them!
So… be kind as you check out the posters for my different projects!
Design School projects – Balcony Scene
Balcony Scene
First year – Bustier
Based on the illustration style, I’m pretty sure that this project is from the second semester of the first year. I also made the final garment to fit myself – which is another clue. However I can’t be 100% sure.
For this project we needed to design and construct a supportive bustier. It could have shoulder straps, but could not rely on those straps to support. Of course, this was an extra challenge for the class members designing for full busts rather than smaller, perky, self-supporting busts!
Design School projects – Balcony Scene
I used a quilting cotton that I overdyed so it was a tonal red-on-red, and added external wired ‘boning channels’ which snapped off (for laundering) that supported a layer of tulle covered in artificial flowers.
This was long before I got into corsetry but absolutely set the groundwork – as a few of my early projects were based off the patterns I made for this.
Design School projects – Balcony Scene
Project
The project itself required designing a mini-line to accompany the bustier. I don’t remember the criteria, but I included a cami-top (or I’d probably call this a bralette today), a robe, two bras, a set of boxers (for women), a slip, a French cut panty and a Rio cut panty.
I did two posters for this – the first that illustrated the spec drawings, fabric swatches, and front-and-back illustrations of the bustier without the attached net/ flowers. The second was intended to set a ‘tone’ and illustrated the robe, the cami-top, the bustier with the attached net/ flowers, and both panties.
Design School projects – Balcony Scene
While I’m happy with the “feel” of both of these posters, and the spec drawings… the illustrations are.. um… not great. They were painted on watercolour paper (with watercolour paints), cut out, and glued onto the poster board.
The board was just plain poster board, but covered with hand-made Japanese rice paper. I loved this paper so much I ended up using it on multiple projects which ended up creating a fairly common ‘brand’ across my projects – though I wasn’t doing this as intentionally as I’d like to have. In second year I started to aim for more of a united brand, but branding wasn’t really part of our program, so I only learned more about this after leaving Design School.
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Design School projects – Balcony Scene
Stay tuned for some of the other Design School projects I did, which I hope to continue on Thursdays for Throwback Thursday!
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