Bridge 4: Egret Coating

Bridge 4: Egret Coating

The Bridge 4 project meant to create a garment that is corresponding to the topic that is researched in Seminar class. At the same time, explore and experiment different techniques that can be used in fabrication of a garment.

Finalize/Change Bridge 4: Final Garment or Textile Piece Idea Check – April 10th

Topic

My Seminar research paper discusses that humans will keep killing the birds for the demand of feathers in the fashion industry even though it endangered the bird species. Here is my thesis statement:

Supposed that fashion industry did not learn from the large-scale extinction of bird species from Plume Hunting in 19th century, although there are many bird cruelty movements. the usage of real bird feather will not stop in the future because people make excuses from that collecting feather does not require the slaughter of the bird, the existed feather industries will not spend their profits in inventing new technology to create synthetic feather, and feathers have been kept consuming as the symbolization of class privilege since centuries ago.

MoodBoard

Inspiration and Notes

I narrowed down my inspiration to one specific bird species: Egret. They are elegant birds with fine white plumage. Egret is the city bird of my hometown, Xiamen. It is a State Second-Class Protected Animals in China as well as on the list of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora).

Sketches

I choose to make a cape because when it is fluttered by the wind it will looks like birds extend their wings and ready to flight, The cape will be white, overlay by a layer of gauze that is embroidered by multi-light-color threads. The neckline will be decorated by beaded feathers. 

Plans

• Make sample beading feathers according to the two patterns.
• Make a small scale embroidery piece with feather pattern.
• Final Documentation:
  • Location: on the beach, use sea and sky as the background/in the wetland park with other birds (if I got good luck)
  • Make-up: teal, yellow, black, like the colors on Egret face (see moodboard)
  • Hair: put up (like the hair style in notes page), make Egret decoration

Bridge 4: Work in Progress Check – April 24th

Material Research

Fabric: I find this gauze that shines while reflecting the lights. It is also very soft and light in concept of representing birds’ feathers.

Feathers: I am also experimenting making “feathers” from gauze. Cut a piece of fabric, lock stitch and pull the cross grains out by hands. below I put the “feathers” I hand made next to what it looks like before the cross grains were pulled off. I am planning using these feathers to make a trim on the collar of the cape.

Beads: I brought different kinds of beads and mixed them together, considering making mix-beading feathers. The beads are either cream/white or silver. One kind of bead looks like pearl.

Progress

Ease-stitch the general direction of the shoulder-to-toe giant feather embroidery pattern

 

Bridge 4: Part 1 – Material Binder – May 1st

My direction is to research substitute feathers and making feathers from other materials instead of using real feathers in my piece. 

Beading

My first idea is to make beaded feathers because I considered the beading has delicate and diaphanous chracteristics that is similar to feather. The product doesn’t turn out like the feathers as much; it is more like a beaded outline of it and is much heavier than a feather.

Making Feather from Gauze

Inspired by a novel that mentioned making feather from gauze, I made some sample by pulling out the cross grains of the gauze out. They look very similar to the real feathers. It is as light and fine as the feather.

Emboidery

Emboidering is challenging; it is always a technique I would like to experiment. I found emboidery help me to destress. Emboider the pattern of feather take s lot of works. Because the fabric is semi-transperent, I made the stitchs on the back filled the gaps to make it more like a feather. the emboidery feather is not as fine but still looks like a styled feather.

Reflection

For me, learning and chanllenging different techniques are exciting. Amoung three techniques I researched, beading doesn’t work as well; making feathers from gauze and emboidery looks great even better than I expected during the expirements. I will keep my orriginal idea of emboidering a pair of shoulder-to-toe feathers on the body of the cape representing wings. The gauze feathers fits my concept so well that I plan to use more of them rather than the beading. I will layer mutiple ‘sample #1’ from “Making Feathers from Gauze” around the neckline of the cape. I will make longer and wider ‘sample #2’ and stitch the top with the neckline and leave it flies freely.

 

Bridge 4: Part 2 – Final Garment – May 8th

I took the beading, making feather form gauze and emboidery from material research and created my final garment based on the idea of representing the elegant white bird–Egret.

Egrets are waterfowl.

Hair and Make-up Design

The hair was put up for showing the design around the neckline. For the eyeshadows, I considered to use the teal that middle egret has around their eyes along with silver and sparkles to create the feeling of egret fairy,

The Final Garment-Cape

The gauze cape is semi-transparent, adding dreamy and ethereal elegance to any outfit. Though I did not reach my full expectation towards the emboidery on the body of the cape, the emboifery on the right side is an excellent expression of my idea and I believe if I have more time I will be able to emboider both sides with more delicate stiches. The beading pieces were used as decoration as well as the gauze feathers that were stitched to the collar. I also wish I can make more long feather-fringe from gauze added to the top of cape.

 

Final Look

Egrets are waterfowls. I decided to shot it at Wuyuanwan Wetland Park where people can observe many different bird speicies during the summer. The model with white dress with my “Egret Coating” is like a bird fairy playing in the water plants.

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