The grid

Looking at the last experiment I wrote about I created a grid of squares that were cut in the warp, weft and bias. I sewed them all together in a jumble, for eg. a weft square would be sewn in between a bias and weft sqaure. The images below shows you how warped the square became once it was stretched. Unlike the dress I wrote about in the previous post I decided to stretch the squares once they were sewn together. This has been a bit of a struggle throughout the semester because originally I liked the idea of stretching a pattern, so there would be no rips in the seams and to me it was something I hadn't really heard of before. Having said that there always seems to be someone who has done what you're doing anyway! I've gone back and forth between stretching with the pattern and stretching the constructed garment. I'm not sure which is better yet, it's certainly much easier to stretch when the garment is made. They achieve slightly different results. The experiment which I blogged about last post worked well, but because the fabric stretched at different lengths, there was that gathered effect that I didn't like. The bias, warp and weft have minds of their own and you need to predict there moves before you design.

Before

After

Following on from my 'stay' experiment I decided to do a few little tests to work out the effects I could create. The image below shows the 3 squares that I cut out in the warp, weft and bias with a calico ribbon sewn across the stretch. The second image shows the effects of the stretching. The stays are an indicator of the fabrics original structure, and I can see this inspiring a new design quite easily. You could go crazy with the stays and try and keep the original shape of the singlet with heaps and heaps of the ribbons.

Before

After