Tuesday, 13 December 2011

The Little Black Dress Claire Fortune AD 208 Skills Development 2 : Diary


Embroidery
 
I came I on the Wednesday to complete the embroidery, I found that this was the most exciting part of the construction of my dress; I really enjoyed seeing my design being put on to fabric. I started the process by drawing out the image that I wanted to embroider to my fabric (the peacock feather), I made the image as simple as possible and to scale so that it would be easier for the machine to complete.
-          One I had my image draw out I then scanned it in to the computer and using ‘Wilcom DecoStudio’ Software I placed it in to the document and converted in first in to a clip art image for the computer to recognize it and then converted it in to the embroidery stitching. At this point it was clear that there was far too many stitches involved in completing the original image so to save time and thread usage I was told to change the stitch count, this was a sort of trial and error work based learning. After changing the setting it was obvious that the clip art setting on the original image was the course of the stitch count so we went back to the start of this method and altered the image to a line drawing and followed the process again, until I was happy with the outcome. Although this process was very time consuming and frustrating I knew that it was necessary and would be worth it in the end.
-          After completing the design using the software it was the suggested that I could produce a test piece that would show the dimension of my design and also test whether or not the fabric and thread could take the strain of the image.
-          One of the interesting skills I learnt from this process was being able to thread up the embroidery machine by basically following the same method as the industrial sewing machines (tying off the old thread and pulling it through to thread the needle). I found that threading up the machine was quite difficult due to the small parts and placement of the needle, but at least in the future I will know the procedure.
-          Putting the embroidery on to my final skirt on to my skirt was not as easy as I thought it would be due to the scale and the limited room to put the outline to whole the fabric in place. Because I had already cut out my fabric I was not able to have my embroidery in the original place I had decided (along the waist line) instead it had to be moved down to below the button wrap to allow the machine to sew it. Even though the image has been moved I think that it still works well and show my inspiration very well. 
-          The process for producing the embroidery section was very tricky and time consuming as it took 2 whole days to complete however I would happily do it all over again to create the end result.

No comments:

Post a Comment