Object one: Purse/ Accidental chair cushion
I had originally had drawn this design out to be more of a connected tube to the big circle in the middle. I put together to circle shapes out of fabric to make the big center circle and then made a very long skinny rectangle of the two other fabrics to make the rest of the shape. I had other things I wanted to add to this piece, but this one took me much more time than I thought it would. I had wanted the model to be colorful and different textures, but with my new sewing knowledge using these materials was a give and take and process so it probably took me much longer to do than it should have.
I do really enjoy the relationship between the red and blue fabrics. There is this push and pull dynamic and this stretch of fabric which I find really adds to the form and texture and extenuates the light off the latex red. I tried to learn from this piece and sew better for my next one and develop beyond the basic shapes.
Object 2: JellyFish
Once again I continued to try to use different materials. I ended up making more mistakes in this and ended up ripping a lot of material off either because it was too fragile with the thin strips or just did not look right. For this one I tried to go in a different direction and try different methods of sewing. I made pleats on the circle to try to bring in the shape and I ended up leaving it exposed. The top where it is the pink material I actually have 3 fabrics below it. What happened was when I was doing the pleats on the same fabric as the lower one it ended up looking really weird. I tried to add a sheer piece that I had sewen on tip to help but it still was not right so I sewed the pink on top and attached it and stuffed the circular shape. I think my fix worked well, but it was definitely a learning experience for me to figure out what worked best.
I had cut some thin red fabric pieces next and hung them from the outside. I cut them very thin and when cutting them I realized I should have used a felt fabric because they were falling apart in my hands. I attached them anyways hoping that the problem would go away, but when I looked at the strips after it was not working so I removed them after I spent a ton of time individually hand sewing them on.
Next I went on to make the black and pink pieces that come from the bottom of the jellyfish. I sewed the middle of some cut rectangular strips on the sewing machine not closing them and then pulled the string to make the fabric bunch together. There was also a learning curve on this because sometimes I would pull too hard and the string would snap. All these pieces had to be sewen on I think I sewed on 7 total. After I had done this, it still looked incomplete. So this is where I grabbed the mesh piece and cut it in this wavy pattern to put on the top. I learned from my messed up red strips to sew the fabric at the end of my cut so that it would not fall apart. I am really happy that I did this and I think following my curvy cut helped me be more precise with sewing on the sewing machine. At this point in time I also realized that I had been sewing with my lines being quite separated and making them closer really helped me when I moved on to attaching all my laser cut pieces.
Object 3: an accidental seal?
This was the piece I did on Rhino. I had probably around 30 cut pieces of the laser cutter. What I first started with was matching my pieces up to the colors I gave them in rhino and marking that on the fabric so I would know what went where. I then started to put them together and sew them piece by piece. I think this is where I made my mistake sewing. The shape ended up getting weird in a few spots and I think I can contribute it to me sewing it on piece by piece instead of sewing the pieces that went linearly down my shape together and then piece strips of them together to mack the complete shape. I think my other mistake was in choosing this material instead of felt. This material is much more movable, and when laser cutting my guide lines for sewing the corners got burnt out so I ended up sewing rips up everywhere. I think in the future I would be interested in trying this again with a new sewing idea with attaching pieces differently and using felt.
I think rhino will also be more helpful with pieces a bit more simplistic than what I did. My piece was a weird shape so to scrunch it down in rhino I had to make so many separate pieces and I think that was unrealistic of me to have so many components. I did enjoy taking the time to better my sewing with this piece, but I definitely want to try to do something in rhino again. I would much rather take hours pinning together laser cut pieces rather than cutting out the shapes by fabric and maybe not knowing what the outcome will be even if you want something specific.
