Lily Lee Upcyle Assignment Unrulr
For this assignment I am planning on focusing on the 80’s exercise aesthetic I chose for the first assignment. This semester I really want work with fabric and textiles, so instead of making a lamp or something like that I really want to work on sewing and building clothes. For this assignment I also really want to use only clothes I currently own. So all of the pieces I am going to use will hopefully come from my closet. The pieces I am planning on sewing are likely going to come from an old tshirt I no longer wear, that way I can upcycle it and find new use. AS well as improve my sewing and textile fabrication skills. I am planning at the very least to create arm/sweat bands, leg warmers and possibly a belt. All of these will be sewn together. I am planning at the moment to likely hand sew although I will possible move to a sewing machine. Here is the basic sketch I have so far. The pieces are roughly sketched out as well as a rough sketch of the look/color of the finished product. I am sure it is not going to turn out exactly like this but it is a start.
This week was really focused on getting myself acquainted with a sewing machine. I have never really utilized a sewing machine before so this was all new territory. I spent many hours just watching videos and learning how to thread. Specifically figuring out how to insert my bobbin as well as thread the upper part of the sewing machine.
After I understood that I moved on to basic stitches. I was using black thread on black fabric which makes it a little hard to see, but I ended up taking a picture of my very first stitch because it was very exciting. After I did a lot of test stitching, I ended up learning how to troubleshoot a little when some thread got jammed in my machine. The first many hours of this project was really just learning how to sew with a machine.
After this period of time I moved on to trying to mock up my first bit of the project. I switched over to white thread to make it easier to see and then decided to try and mock up a version of the sweat bands. I added the process images here to show how I tried mocking up this version. I ended up with something that does look like a sweat band. It makes me confident now that I have the ability to create something that reflects my sketches. Now this next week I will move on to trying to make this with my actual fabric. I am planning on looking through my old clothes to find something that matches my sketches and going for it. I am excited for the next step now that I feel more comfortable with the sewing machine.
This week was focused on starting to create everything using the real fabric. I ended up using a tshirt from high school that I got from a DECA competition. It is light and I like the bright blue color. I started by looking at my black mockup from last week and trying to replicate it. I cut two identical rectangles out of the shirt and then folded them over and started the machine. I was really struggling to keep the sewing machine from pulling the fabric. It was incredibly hard to get a straight line. I went back through the lines a few times to ensure there weren’t any holes in the fabric. Then the hard part came. I have no idea how to sew circular objects. I had kinda winged it in my prototype but so it was once again a lot of trial and error for me. Considering I am only at week 2 of ever using a sewing machine I am trying to cut myself some slack with how wonky some of the stitching is. I accidentally sewed through the entire cuff of one of them and had to rip out all of the seems. But I fixed it. Overall I did sew two blue sweat bands, they are not perfect but they are intact and I am definitely slowly improving my sewing skills. Next week will be creating the leg warmers which should be a nearly identical process and then the headband and/or belt. these should be easier as they will be smaller and less likely to get caught on my sewing machine.
This last week was another just week of me battling my sewing machine. Pretty much the entirety of the project has been spent learning how to use a sewing machine. I had zero experience whatsoever coming into the project. Which meant pretty much the entire first part of the project was just me learning how to do basic stitches on a sewing machine. I spent so many hours watching youtube videos and pulling my thread off the machine trying to get it to work. At least I can say for future projects I have a pretty good idea of how to a machine and a much better understanding of how to stitch together pieces of fabric. There are so may things I would do differently if I continued this project and/or did another sewing project. For starters I really need clips to hold my pieces together when sewing. So much of my time was spent trying to use pins that I had laying around the house which really just meant me continually pocking myself by the pins and getting annoyed when they didn’t work.
This week I also got to learn how to change a needle on a machine since in the middle of the process my needle snapped. So that was another fun learning curve which took me a while to figure out. Finally once I had a working sewing needle again and I had rethreaded everything I was finally able to complete the last parts of the project. I finished the leg warmers, which turned out ok although having clips would have greatly helped the seams but you live and learn. Then I worked on the belt/headband I still wasn’t sure if I was going to use it as a belt or a headband yet. In my research they were both common so I just had to make a decision. Finally once everything was sew together and I had stopped poking myself with the pins I had to do the final step which was figuring out the outfit.
I spent so long digging through my old clothes trying to find something I didn’t hate, this was the best I could come up with after trying so many different combinations of things. For this project I basically spent the entire time learning a new skill. So I guess I can call it a success.
