How do I sew my dream dress?
By Saanvi Singh MYP5A
Personal Project Exhibition
November 26th 2020
Motivation/Personal Interest
Ever since I was a little girl I've always had a passion for fashion, I would always create my own clothing designs. Still to this day I'm very fascinated by the fashion world and I would love to have a fashion-based career in the future. I know how to design clothing however I never had the chance to learn how to sew with a sewing machine. Therefore I've decided to use my personal project as a way to learn more about my passions.
For my Personal Project, I learned how to sew using a sewing machine, and the outcome is a dress. The global context is "Personal and Cultural expression" because my dress has Indian elements in it, it represents my cultural background and the dress is also a representation of my dream dress. In order to make my dress look Indian, I made a two-piece lehenga along with a lace dupatta to match the blouse. I also wanted the dress to be a representation of my dream dress, so I used my favorite colors, shape, fabric type and fitting.
Process planning
Planning for project
Before I started creating the dress, I decided to research/learn about these topics and explain how it will benefit my project.
Learn how to design clothing:
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Designing clothing is similar to a plan and it helps you understand what you must create, size, shape, color, and what fabrics are being used. I’m going to learn fashion designing by taking an online fashion designing course from Marc Jacobs a famous American Fashion designer, it also includes learning about different fabrics as well
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Researching about Indian Festive wear.
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Research about Indian dresses, and what characteristics they have in terms of style, design, embroidery color combinations, etc. I own Indian clothing so I will analyze each one and get inspiration from the dresses, I will also read Indian fashion books which will help develop the design.
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Learn how to sew.
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Learning how to sew is the most crucial part of this project, in order to create my outcome I must learn how to sew using a sewing machine. With the aim of learning to sew, the function of each part of the machine must be understood, the types of stitches, and which each tool is used for. I will learn about this by reading books about sewing, reading the sewing machine manual, and watching videos since it's a visual representation thus it would be easier to comprehend.
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Learn about different types of fabric.
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I will research the types of fabrics used in evening gowns.
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Pattern making.
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For my dress to be successful it's important to understand the garments needed in a dress, how the fabric will be cut out and which parts are sewed together this is called pattern making, this will make it easy to construct the dress. Measurement is needed when making a dress, one of my criteria is to make sure the dress fits me perfectly, and in order to complete these criteria, I must have the right measurements.
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What issues came along during the process and how did I fix them?
During this project, I did encounter a few issues which resulted in changes. At the start of this project, I knew I wanted to do a fashion-related Personal Project. However, my decision was quite rushed, my initial idea was to create sustainable clothing with recyclable materials. A few weeks later I decided to change my idea since I didn't feel a personal connection or interest in my project. I changed my Personal Project to "How can I sew my dream dress?" and I also changed the global context from Globalization and Sustainability to Personal and Cultural Expression. After I changed my idea I felt more connected with my project and I created a better plan for it.
Criteria
Process taking action
Once my process planning was complete, I decided to put it into action. I started off by prioritizing each activity. I spent more time learning how to sew instead of spending most of the time fashion designing since I had prior experience and knowledge on fashion designing whereas sewing I had no prior experience. Learning different types of fabrics was quite easy therefore I spent less time on that. In the beginning, learning how to sew was challenging since I didn't know how the machine worked and I had no experience with sewing, that's why I decided to learn the different parts of the machine and the function. It took time and practice to get better at sewing, I had trouble since the thread would start gathering up, at times the fabric would get stuck, and the fabric would tear.
I’m a visual learner therefore watching videos, reading books with images and diagrams helped me understand how the different parts of a sewing machine work and how to sew. I started off by practicing on a piece of cloth and I attempted several stitches. When I mastered doing stitches without difficulty I decided to test it out by making a cloth face mask. By practicing stitching to create smaller items it helped me understand how sewing works, and I got more practice. After I felt more confident with sewing I decided to make a prototype version of the blouse with my measurements such as waist, bust, length, shoulder, back, etc.
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For my Personal Project, the materials required were a sewing machine, fabrics such as silk, cotton, lace, and ribbon, thread, elastic, pins, fabric pencil, zipper, fabric scissors, and a thread cutter. For the dress, I had to ensure that the thread color was identical to the dress color.
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Final Product
