Caramel Rock Adventures: Almost finished...hopefully.

Happy New Year everyone! Whilst you all had a wonderful rest to cure your hangovers and party feet I decided to go into Caramel Rock to finish my prototype of a "dress". The template said dress but the garment ends up being a jacket. I'm just annoyed because the sleeves don't match with the body but that can easily be fixed. Another nuisance was having to tack everything together by hand even though I prefer stitching everything in one go as it is quicker and this is only a prototype.

The fabric is so puuuurrrttyyy! I think a zip would go well with this...if I can't find a zip long enough then I'll use hooks and eyes.

I even got so annoyed I decided to stab the mannequin with pins. I think I should get one in my house to stab ...its a great stress relief.

Thanks for stopping by!

M

Excuse our inactivity~ すみません！

We've been Christmas ghosts for a bit now... But never fear! We'll be back in full swing after Christmas! We've got a few projects coming up so watch this space!

I've never spent so much time in Westfield until now because no matter how organised I am in planning presents, me and my parents always forget that one godchild we absolutely must get a present for.

We're still over at Caramel Rock, hopefully we finish soon, we're at the paper pattern cutting stage, which Rianna loathes. 

Here's my final design for a coat dress which I need to do the paper pattern for...soon...

Also, check out my decked out Christmas tree and the amount of presents we've got so far...unfortunately over half of them are for my little sister -.-

Thanks for stopping by today~

M

OOTD: Caramel Rock Adventures.

Rianna and I seemed to be rocking out plaid today. So we took a few pictures of our outfits :)

Busy Busy Busy!

We haven't updated in a while have we? -sigh-. Sorry guys, it appears Rianna and I have succumbed to the pressures of writing English essays. I guess this post is to update you on the recent things we've been doing in and out of school.

Caramel Rock

 So we recently begun a "Fashion Open" course with Caramel Rock based in Canning Town. This course takes 10-12 weeks to complete and is every Friday till Saturday. It consists of us learning how to design, create and present our work to each other and to other people. My little qualm about the course is the amount of time it takes up. On Fridays we go in from 4.30 till 6.30 pm and on Saturdays we go in from 11-4.30 pm. So by the end of the week, we are KNACKERED. Its also why we haven't gone out to do Street Snaps or just generally go out. After the course we get an accreditation and we get to a chance to showcase our work in local fashion shows or in London Fashion Week. Despite that I have some doubts...

Sneaky shot of Rianna doing some design work, hee.

F.A.D Fashion Forward Careers Course.

I did this a week ago without Rianna -sigh-  It was an intensive 2-day course about our future choices and beyond. The first day involved talks from undergraduate students studying Textiles and Fashion. They were all studying in London. One funny thing was how the textiles students all had massive portfolios filled with samples of weave, stitching, print, dye and many more decorative techniques where as the fashion students just whipped out their iPad or portfolio to show us drawings of initial ideas and design developments and research. 

The second day involved meeting professionals in the field, so we met a trend forecaster and a boutique owner based in Dalston who worked with environmentally friendly material, check out: http://www.heretoday-heretomorrow.com/

P.S Their winter accessories have beautiful velvet lining, their muffler is on my wishlist!

Its a very intense two days with a close group of people, if you plan on taking Textiles A-Level or planning to do anything with fashion in the future, I highly recommend any opportunity given by F.A.D!

Textiles Coursework

So we've been pressing on with our textiles coursework and got started on my favourite bit (designing).

In comparison to GCSE, A-Level is a lot more fast paced and intensive, a lot of choices are made impulsively and its never good to be behind on work. We've almost completed our paper pattern for our waistcoats and we are currently designing our skirts.

The main aspect of our waistcoats are decorative techniques used and for our skirts we are looking at the structure and how it is constructed. Our paper patterns made us think quite a bit, because of this we can foresee what a nuisance our paper patterns for our skirt is going to be.

So here are my designs, I'll update this post with Rianna's design work later~

Melissa's Initial Design Ideas

Melissa's Design Development

Melissa's Final Design