Final Project – Iris Miao

Intention:

When I first started planning what I wanted to do with my final project, I thought of making something that would represent me as an individual. I knew I wanted to share my own struggles and somehow connect them to a larger issue. I thought of creating a piece of clothing in the form of a Girl Scout slash, as I was a GS for many years and saw the discrepancies between what I was taught as a child and my own mentality which evolved as I advanced to middle and high school. My intention with this project was to create something that revealed the societal pressures a young woman has to face as well as the internal conflicts she must deal with.

 

Process:

As stated before, I originally wanted to create an article of clothing but after a while, I thought it would be more powerful for the piece to be a sort of graphic poster. To me, graphic posters are bold and when hung up on a wall, they draw everyone’s attention. I used applique for the actual slash and the for pasting the badges on the slash. I also incorporated some hand stitching as I thought it would perfectly fit into the theme of childhood.

 

Learning:

From this project, I learned that hand stitching is very difficult and time consuming. It was the part that took me the longest especially since my pieces were so small that a lot of attention and care had to go into it. Also, I realized that the slash did look like the state of California, especially when it was hung and looked at at a distance. If I were to do it again, I would be more precise with the cutting and drafting of the center piece.