versus me: Always remember...SAFETY FIRST

In my quest to go 'big' I went with an idea Adele had involving escalators and fabric. The idea was simple.
1. Get person A to stand at the top of the escalator and hold one end of the fabric.
2. Get person B to hold on to the other end and step onto the escalator.
3. Try not to kill person A or person B.

I'll admit that the third step was more of a given, but it may have turned out to be the most important step to keep in mind. I asked Hila and Fi to be person A and B for my experiment. It seemed to be going fine, but there was one critical step I should have thought about. Somebody needed to decide who was going to let go!
After a moment of panic Fi decided to let go (which was a good option) leaving Hila balancing on the always moving, always sharp and dangerous steps. This could have been a very different blog post if Hila hadn't of been able to balance and save herself. Phew!

Stretching on escalator

Glad that I'm not having to write an obituary for a friend, I'll just report on a few results.
The fabric I use had been boiled and put through the dryer before I stretched it.It was a cheap fabric from Spotlight-65% Polyester 35% Cotton. The experiment went well, however it still relied on the strength of the people holding the fabric which I hadn't thought about. There needs to be a way of securing the fabric at the top, and on the stairs, yet even if you found a way, the steps would need to be controlled some way. As the escalators are automatic you couldn't do that.
Another brief, and I repeat BRIEF idea I had was you could have one person holding a fabric outside the lift, one person in it and see if the fabric could stretch that way. I suggested it to Fi and Hila, not surprisingly they didn't offer to participate in the next experiment.

Another little side project I had going in class was with my 'suspected' viscose knit. I purchased it from Rathdowne remnants and when I soaked the fabrics in boiling water for 30 mins, the blue dye ran everywhere. The staff said that there wasn't any viscose knits but there may be some blends in the cotton section, so I picked out this fabric because of it's silky touch.

The blue dye comming out of the washing machine.

I had this idea that instead of stretching the fabric in pattern form, I could stretch it while it was on the body. The pictures show the doubled top that the wearer could drop weights into, and gradually change the shape of the garment. Adele steered me away from this and just thinking back on it now it's impractical to think that people would buy a garment that they have to put bricks, weights in. I know I wouldn't.

Stretching the neckline on the stand

As the dress was on the stand, I started playing with the fabric and Adele saw how well that was working and suggested I run with different methods for stretch. There are many ways to actually stretch the fabric but they all have different results. I need to document this. Which brings me to my next point... recording. It would be great to have a small video to display these processes at the end of semester crit. So I'm going to start recording the experiments in the hope that I can collate it into a video.

In other design news I found an unlikely muse (unlikely in the exploratory sense) in Ashley Olsen. I was stealing a dose of much need Grazia goodness (stealing in the 'I stole my friends copy of Grazia' sense) and saw this image of Ashley in a white cut out Calvin Klein dress. When I got over my moment of sighing this was the conversation that went through my head (because this is how twisted my I've got lately) "I wonder what fabric that is? Silk/viscose/polyester, knit/sateen/two way knit etc. I hope Francisco hasn't used viscose because that dress will drop and you won't be able to see that cut out anymore". That got me then to think, what if Francisco did make that out of a viscose knit and he had included the drop in his design? Straight away I went back to my American Apparel top and how the neck and sleeve lines had dropped due to the viscose. If you designed a garment with the 'dropping' in mind then each time you wear the garment it would look different. I'm glad I've had this brain wave and my Grazia time out wasn't a waste. I've been stuck a lot with design possibilities, but I think this idea could work really well.