As a whole, I feel that my project successfully communicates my concept; my work captures my passion for the natural world and the way I work is very clear through out my sketchbooks due to the sense of flow across them, and there is evidence of the calm and meditative nature of my work/processes.
From the start, I aimed to keep my work well organised, with a separate book each for contextual research, experimentation, and design development; this was an effective way of presenting my thoughts and ideas clearly, and I have maintained a connection between them all by working in them simultaneously.
I have gathered a large body of primary research through my own photography that has been the main source of inspiration for all of my samples and experimentation. In terms of contextual research, there is a substantial amount, from a range of sources, which I utilised to inform my practice, however, my project could have benefitted from more research- specifically in the context of the fashion world, with more analysis into nature and sustainable practice in fashion currently, as well as steps being taken in the future. I also could have researched more in the way of sustainable living, and experimenting with aspects of my own life to merge secondary and primary research into this matter.
As mentioned in my proposal, I wanted to broaden my research from simply looking at textures and surfaces in nature to looking at alternative interpretations and uses of the the natural world. One way that I did this was by looking into the medicinal purposes of elements from the natural world, although I did not really use this in the development of my final samples and design development. Another interesting route for my research would have been looking more scientifically at plants; I had intended to do this by seeing if I could get into the Kew Gardens library to look at botanical illustrations and also researching and recording nature at a cellular level, unfortunately I did not manage to do this. My proposal also included the possibility of a transition from everyday plants to more exotic ones- I gathered primary research into this topic through photographs and drawings, however due to time limitations, I could not explore this further.
At the start of the FMP, eight weeks plus three weeks during easter break sounded like enough time to fully explore my ideas, including wandering off into other lines of enquiry. Once I got started with my experimentation and sample making, the time seemed to fly by . Many of the techniques I was using (and textiles in general) were quite time-consuming, and before I knew it, it was the end of week 5 which meant I had to start design development ASAP. Perhaps more efficient time management from the start would have allowed me to collect research more broadly and do more with it… I should have carried out research much quicker in order to cover more areas before moving on to experimentation. Instead, I got quite absorbed in researching moss textures, which I hadn’t previously anticipated but I was surprised by the amount of varying work I could produce from the one aspect of nature, so regardless of my research beyond everyday nature, I think I have produced an interesting and varied body of work.
Referring back to better time management, I would have also been able to develop and possibly combine more of my textiles as I would have like to do more with my prints such as embroidering over them to give them more texture, and I did not manage to explore knit much which was something I was intending to do, but as always, time was running out.
As expected, I feel that I could have done with more design development towards my final outcome to explore more options, however I still think the garment I created and the final photoshoot was successful in representing my work up to this point. Adding the wool texture took longer than I expected, so in the future, I would look at alternate ways of achieving a similar effect but using a quicker and easier method. Another improvement for the garment, would be giving slightly more shape to the middle of the dress (as I have mentioned in a previous blog).
Through out the FMP I have been updating my blog regularly to keep track of my progress, evaluate my work and record feedback. I have found this to be a useful way of analysing my work (looking at successes, improvements and problem solving), and also as a continual record of my thoughts all the way through the project. Looking back over some of my blogs and from feedback, I gather that they could be a little more evaluative, with more specific analysis of individual samples- this is something I will work on in the future when evaluating my work.
an.andycaptures 