Personal Project Report
In order to fit my personal interest, and have a chance to practice what I may do in university, my personal project was designing and sewing a dress. Designer is my ideal job in the future, so I believe personal project will be a great opportunity to take my first step out on designing.My personal project was involved in two AOIs: Technology and Arts. The reason my project was relevant to these two AOIs is because before I actually sewed the dress, I needed to think about fashion styles and draw a draft for the dress, so it needed arts skills to complete it. Further more, sewing machine was one of the most important parts of this progress, and it was kind of a using of technology. Therefore, after completing this project, both of my arts and technology areas will be improved.That was my first time doing fashion design, I started it with exciting and nervous. My goal was successfully designing and sewing a dress. By the word “successfully”, I didn’t mean to make a perfect and professional- looking dress. All I wanted was gaining self experience and learning new skill. Since designer is my ideal future job, I believed this personal project could help me a lot. Fortunately, I have my supervisor and parents help me, without their helps, I couldn’t have done this project favorably. Although my dress looks defective, but skills I have learned are invaluable, and it also symbolizes my first step that I have stamped on the way to my ideal job.
When I firstly started to think about the project, all I thought of was making an unique dress. In order to gain multiple techniques and successfully complete my personal project, I searched all information I could use to develope my project. I had looked through books, internet, and asked other people who are experienced. I eventually found numerous resources and learned from them. I researched about various fashion and dress styles, and I was inspired by many of them. Like books I borrowed from library, Fashion Illustration: Inspiration and Technique, and Vogue Fashion: Over 100 years of style by decade and designer, in association with Vogue. They contains hundreds of fashion styles, and illustrates out the styles of modern fashion and how people are able to find their inspiration and actualize it. They also includes famous designer and normal consumers’ opinion of fashions, which gave me lots of inspiration. Finally, I decided to sew a dress that can be worn in two ways. Also, because I was about going to Hawaii for vocation, I decided to make the dress really thin and light to match the beach style. To fit the style I wanted, I also looked up different materials of clothes. I found some websites that tell people details about how you should choose fabrics and differences between every fabric. After I had a rough idea about uses of different fabrics, I decided to choose chiffon as my final choice. I also found a specific website that talks about chiffon. From that website, I learned that chiffon is really light and soft, it is good to be used as summer clothes, but it is also very difficult to be sewed and cut. Afterwards, I tried to draw some graphs about my design. Again, I felt so lucky that my supervisor is a librarian so that she gave me lots of helps on choosing book resources. She found me a book called Contemporary fashion illustration techniques, which teaches people very detailed methods of drawing bodies and translating the real cloth to a designing draft on a piece of paper. However because of the lack of skills, I still couldn’t present my ideal comprehensively on paper. Therefore I borrowed a fashion model from art room, and directly started to measure and gesticulate on the model. I didn’t have ideal about how to cut a sew dress at all at first time, but a book that I have personally teaches about how to divide a full piece of fabric into separated pieces by your design, so you can sew them together and be able to actualize the dress. This book gave me many advices when I began to cut out the shape of my dress. When I had done all my research, I only had one month left to actually sew my dress. I divided my process into four parts, and made a plan about it. Then I did my project by my plan and finished each part on time, so I could hand in my project on time.
However, the project was not as easy as I thought. I met lots of troubles which I didn’t even think about before I started the project. I used my shabby socks to try out the sewing machine first. But I didn’t know why, the sewing thread just never went into the cloth. I got so annoyed and I tried several different ways to make a perfect border, but I failed. I felt so depressed that I was even thinking of giving up. After some trials of defeat, I ran out my thread, which meant I had mount a new one. That was one of the worst part in my project. I was so bad at mounting thread on. I kept dropping the thread so it could not be fit into the little container. I really hoped I had four or more hands so I could hold everything. When I finally did it, I realized that I didn’t know how to set up the machine properly. I found a video about how to set up sewing machine from videos I had researched before, and tried to figure out my problem. One of them said sometimes the problem came from something called “presser foot”, it would be solved if I changed one. I followed what it said on the video, and everything was prepared. However, the machine still didn’t work and the needle wasn’t moving at all. Fortunately, my father came by and saw my problem. He told me that he didn’t know about other thins, but it might be voltage problem. This sewing machine is made in China, and China has different pressure for machines from Canada does. The only way I could fix it was converting the voltage, so I had to buy a converter. After I got a new converter, I set my sewing machine up again, and I was finally able to start my project. Also, I kept meeting with my supervisor about once two weeks. We talked about different due days and rubrics, and made sure how I could finish my project on time and get higher mark. She also helped me improve my personal project journal, and gave me some useful suggestions to make my journal better. For example, I didn’t talk much about my research and troubles I met in my progress. She advised me to add more details about every kind of matters I had met during my project, and how I used my research. Without those advices, I think my journal would be really rough.
Although the whole process wasn’t easy and even a bit difficult, I solved most of my problem and finished my project. Nevertheless, because of those troubles I got, I could learn more and better.The best and most obvious thing this project brought me was definitely that I learned a new skill about how to use sewing machine and be able to sew one. I had never sewed before and it was a big challenge for me. Just because I didn’t know anything about fashion designing and cloth sewing, I did large amount of research, which greatly widened my eyes. As an IB learner, I became more open-minded and more knowledgeable. From having no idea about fabric at all, to always thinking if this is the right fabric for this kind of cloth when I am shopping, I improved my knowledge of fashion a lot. Also I am kind of proud of myself because not every one knows how to use a sewing machine. In this well-developed society today, most of girls like me just buy cloths from stores, throw away old ragged cloths without trying to mend them. Even some of them have never seen a sewing machine before. However because of the project, I became the minority people who know how to use sewing machine. Furthermore, this project didn’t only teach my life skill, but also gave me a deeper understanding of the area of interactions I had chosen. I enjoyed the way how I gained my personal experience and learned new skills and knowledge by studying in the technology and art AOIs. I had also tasted if that was the right direction I would go. I was interested in these two AOIs at first, and after I finished my personal project, I ensured more confidently that I want to study further in these two AOIs and relate my future work to these two in these two areas. Moreover, although I finished the project already, I would still like to think about changes I would make if I could do it all again. The reason is when my dress was almost finished,I needed to sew all pieces together. I finally realized how bad I had donepreviously when I started to sew those pieces. When I cut those fabric, I thought I had cut them equally. But the truth turned out, they were never symmetrical. I could only fold one side, and make it look like equal to another side. If I could do it one more time, I would have double checked all pieces before I sewed them. Another big problem was that I sewed my dress by the model, and when I took it off, I found out that the dress couldn’t fit me. I neglected about the real life application because of the lack of experience. If I had one more chance, I would have definitely measured my own sizes before I starting to do anything and made a proper one.
Overall, I am satisfied with the whole personal project. My personal project was a big challenge and success as the first step I have taken on the road of art and design. As I have said above, maybe this dress looks terrible compared with dresses in stores, but the process is the most valuable part. People can buy beautiful dresses from shops, but they can never experience the same joy I had enjoyed and learn the same life skills I had learned. However, certainly there are lots of details I would like to improve if I have a similar chance in the future. I would definitely find an experienced person to help with me, because although I finally made with the dress, my sewing was really unskilled. Also, after this project, I have gained a deeper understanding of areas I chose to go through, and assure myself more about the direction I am working on. Last but not least, I must appreciate all the helps I had accepted from others, such as my supervisor, my friends and my parents. I had done many mistakes during the project, and they corrected me duly. They gave me helpful advices and suggested me some really good ideas, and I was quited inspired by those ideas. In addition, they took care of numerous details that I had ignored which made me closer to my success. Therefore, thank all people that had helped me during my project. I will remember what I had learned from this project, and go further and better in the area I have chosen.