Shop interior concept board

The decor of my shop is going to be a garden party theme. I'm imagining washing lines with clothes hanging off of them, astro turf flooring, flower pots, topiary etc etc. Here's my concept board for my shop interior which i hope makes my ideas a bit clearer.

More shirt ideas

Continuing with the idea of origami, I've sort of been playing around with more shapes. I still really like the idea of using fabric to fold, even if it is proving to be possible. I'm determined to make it work though! I think I want to use these roses in graduating sizes all over the shoulder panels; getting smaller the closer to the neckline and the lower down the shirt. This could be over ambitious but we'll see how it goes.

First shirt toile

It's about time i got going with my shirt toile as I'm starting to feel the pressure. I'm pretty much doing it the same way as I started my trousers (making the basic shape and then drawing the design lines on). I need to incorporate some of my fabric manipulation which I've been working on over the past few weeks. Here's a couple of ideas I'm thinking about using:

Fabric origami

I've been trying to do some fabric origami like i mentioned before - to no avail! The fabric is far too floppy when just ironing the folds in. I've tried to stiffen the fabric by coating it in PVA mixed with water but that sort of crumbles off when i fold it.

I've done a bit of research into it and I think I either need to use fabric stiffener or starch. Hopefully these will be more successful.

First toile

So I spent most of the morning flat pattern cutting my trousers, but Sian suggested it would be much easier to mock up the basic trouser and draw the design lines on. So after about 3 hours i finally got somewhere!

On the front I'm going to have a turn down which will square off to the hip where there will be pleats. I could potentially turn this into a pocket, but I want to get the basic shape right before i start faffing around with fiddly bits like that.

I draped the waistband to get a nice shape and to achieve the correct proportions. I'm not completely convinced the proportions worked but this is the best I can get for now.

More draping of the waistband, trying to get the shaping right.

My worst nightmare...tracing off patterns!

Shop locations

I went to Deptford to do a focus group, so I thought while I was there I'd take another look at some possible shop locations. There are loads of empty retail spaces in the area but I'm looking for ones around the station area on the High Street. There are a couple of empty shops which I'm going to look into:

Origami

When I was eating lunch in the Deptford project cafe during the summer I noticed they were selling origami roses which i really liked.

For some reason I decided to rekindle my childhood love for paper folding, not really with any relation to my project at first.

Anyhow, I found a couple of good tutorials online here if you want to have a look.

Theirs look slightly better than mine but I don't think it's bad for my first try!

I'm hoping I can some how turn this into a surface texture. Possibly try out some folding fabric, although I imagine that will be almost impossible.

Deptford X

Deptford X is an art festival held in Deptford (obviously). We went on the art map tour so were shown around all the hidden gems in Deptford. Again I've put together a slideshow of all the photos. But I've put a few images of the things I found most interesting.