Week 1- Skirt

In the first creation of garment, the challenge was to create a skirt. My team chose to work with cotton and the buyer bought 100% cotton fabric in colour pink. When getting into the working room I had in my mind to start with a simple a line skirt, so that I could work on the basic pattern of a skirt. I added some details of a fabric that was a composition of cotton and silk, so that the  garment had some decoration.

After I finished the basic line of the skirt, I had a look at the small book I keep all my findings with garments and details and I got inspired by the ballerina skirts. I started experimenting and the basic idea was to create a garment that was " a skirt on another skirt".I liked the thought that this would create a contrast between the sophisticated and ladylike a line skirt, and the girly ballerina skirt.I wanted to make a much shorter ballerina skirt with many seams. So I tried to cut a circle which I later on, but into many small pieces and re-sewed again.

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After I had all the pieces sewed together I took my experimentation further by tearing of the half seaming and sewing the one skirt on the other. The parts of the small fabric pieces that where left, where hanging down and I wanted to put them back on the top.That is how I made the top part around the belly and trapping the small pieces in there. The part under the belt of the belly was out of many torn vertical stripes. My last step on the process of making was to cross inside out another piece of the satin fabric horizontal.

The zip was added in the end and my model was ready to wear the skirt right before the fashion show.

My general comments about the garment:

I personally believe that it worked quite well as an idea but not as a garment due to the many technical problems that were obvious in the way it was sewed and the really low quality of the fabric. I think that if this idea would be worked with another type of fabric and more effort as it has to do with the hours of working on it, it would be a really good and easily wearable skirt. I think that it is fashionable but not at the moment, because the idea is kind of innovative and different from what a buyer can find in the shops, but I think that it could be a trend set. The serious mistake that I should really work on is the opening and in this case the zip because on the lower part it was visible on the outer surface of the garment. There are generally many things that I should definitely do to improve for the next week such as taking more care of the finishings and finishes, taking more time on the sewing machine so that I am not stressed to hurry up with everything on the last second and trying to add a detail like pockets.

The fabric I mainly used for this skirt was 100% cotton and some additional detailing with composition of cotton and silk. I used two meters of fabric for the whole final outcome and it costed me 3 pounds for 2 meters of cotton and 5 pounds for 30 cm of silk. The buyer bought the fabric from the Sepherd's Bush market area of fabric stores.