Bridge 4 “Hoodie Link”

Backing off my last project of helping fit disabled people in clothes, I wanted to piggy back off that idea but with a different meaning. Without thinking of a reasoning at first, I knew I wanted to make a double hooded sweatshirt that 2 people could wear at the same time and have fun together. I had this idea but no  reasoning to back it with. So back to the drawing board I went, but every-time I thought about something else I knew I wanted to make that double hoodie. And at the same time I was completing my Bridge 3 on Uniped Disabilities, i was researching disabilities and would later read that people with disabilities are 2 to 10 times more susceptible to getting depression than people with out disabilities. And that the only ways to help deal with depression are talk therapy or take medication, then puzzled by how there is only 2 ways to help solve it, I then thought this is the market I want to push my project to. So now present day, bang I present to you my “Hoodie Link”, 2 separate double XL hoodies, deconstructed and sewn back together through the seem on both the left and right of either hoodie, creating a flawless big blanket of material with 2 hoodies and 2 sleeves with the capacities of 2 people. As you can see in the pictures, I deconstructed the left sleeve on the right hoodie, and the right sleeve on the left hoodie, and then used that middle seem to then sew on again conjoining the two hoodies by a single middle seem. I intended for this hoodie is a tool to therapists to be able to use with disabled people to go through talk therapy, they both would wear it while talking out the problems and would in the end hope to make the patient feel better than when they walked in! I titled it this product “Hoodie Link” because by definition, linking is the relationship between 2 things, especially where one thing wears off on the other thing. Since the therapists hopefully good moods would wear off on the depressed patient and make them feel better than when they came in, I thought there was no better name. I have not shown this hoodie to someone who has not gotten a good smile or even a tad bit of joy out of it, and I think that is what this hoodie is all about doing!

 

 

Bridge 3 Cut and Sew

My approach to this project was a bit of a special one, I saw a discrepancy in the clothing market for people who have disabilities and need certain tailored clothes. And for this I wanted to create a piece that stood out and also fit their limitations. I drew inspiration from a pair of jeans I had already owned that were missing a leg due to another project and how Oscar Pistorios changed the view of disabled people for ever when he was the first uniped in the Olympics. I focused mainly on wanting to  help “unipeds” or people with a singular arm or leg. To do this I wanted a piece of clothing that would stand out from the crowd! So I decided to go with a half jhort on the left leg half cut and sew leg on the right. I took another pair of jeans and cut up and then resewed onto the right leg, to give the pair of pants a more unique and more intentional look. To make the jeans also look more intentional I also frayed/distressed them at the bottom of the left and right legs. Instead of a disabled person having to hid their disability from the crowd using their clothing, I wanted the clothing to help them stand out from the crowd and hid their disability in plain sight by embracing that, and I think that is what I did!

Fabric & Thread Embroidery IS2

 

For my fabric and thread project, I set out to explore the community aspect in Whole Foods Market. As I did more and more research and field site investigation, I realized that there is to no extent a clear picture of a community in there. Most people tend to get in their, get their grocers, and leave with out smiling even one time. So after some deliberation, the community I decided to portray was the wealthy upper to middle class white person. Whole Foods intended market of shoppers is that group of people, every year they only plant new Whole Foods locations in the highest average income places to attract those kind of shoppers. To portray that class, I didn’t want to just put bags of money or dollar signs everywhere, I wanted to show some sort of fun grocery store aspect that everyone could relate to. For the background of my project, I went with a 3 block by 3 block quilt, made up of alternating produce(bananas, apples, potatoes) on contrasting colored squares. I wanted to display the intended group of shoppers on an item of food that would be able to be purchased at the store, so I went with the classic “Wonder White Bread” which I filled with cotton balls to give it that 3D feel. Using the play on words of “bread” meaning the slang term of  “money”, I also needed a bag of money to help push the concept of the shoppers being extra wealthy, so under the Wonder White Bread I placed a green money sack with the “$” atop. The crown of the money bag also doubles as the crown/opening of the Wonder White Bread, therefore only allowing the money bag to only be seen when the Wonder White Bread is pulled back. The Wonder White Bread is attached to the quilt only at its bottom left corner in order for it to be flexible enough for it to be pulled back when the viewer wants to see the money sack. Start to finish I had fun with sewing this abstract quilt.

 

Zine-Thomas Clem

For my zine, I first thought about what the main title for whole zine was going to be called, after much deliberation I came up with self titling my zine “Thomas Clem”, many music artists self-title their albums or pieces of work after going through change or finding their sort of sound in music, but in my case me finding my own style is the reason of self titling. But for my zine I put a little bit of a twist on it, I showed all the things that did not help me find my style such as preferences, the people I surround myself with, traveling, and the music I listen to. In my zine I put pictures of all the things I was referencing, but then added little annotations to exactly what I was thinking about in that picture, like with the picture of my friends and I, I annotated things like “this jersey is an XXL” or “I would never wear this color” to give the reader a more in depth way to look at why I do not dress like them. For me, I do not like reading, so I set out to make my zine interactive with the reader, so then at the end I put a generic body and made miniature clothes of some of the pieces of clothing I wear and wrote, “Pick my Outfit for me” so then the reader can dress me up the way that they think I should dress with their preferences in mind. One of the toughest situations for me was the sizing of the pages and pictures, and then making the miniature clothes a good size to be able to fit on the generic body.