After printing my designs onto my chosen fabrics last week I started making my cushions. I looked on various websites such as ikea to find out how to make them and discovered some useful tips such as leaving at least a 1.5 cm rim around the design for a seem allowance.
Making the cushions was a longer process than I thought as the softer fabric (85% polyester and 15% cotton) frayed very easily so I had to go around each of the separate components with a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine to stop it fraying. I then had to loosely stitch the different components before using the sewing machine. I wanted to make the backs of the cushions different colours/different materials to make them a bit more interesting. I saw a couple of cushions in John Lewis that had a printed front and a velvet back.
I liked how this looked and decided to do this for at least one of the cushions. It was hard to find the right fabrics and colours to match but luckily I found a purple velvet that went nicely with the leaf pattern and decided to allocate this design with the velvet backing. I have never properly used a sewing machine before so this is definitely a new skill I have learnt whilst doing this project. I also surprisingly found this very enjoyable and will definitely use it more in any future projects.
I am going to have 4/5 cushions in the final display and have made 3 already. So far I am happy with the way they have turned out. On one of them I decided to sew a piping around the edge, although this was the longer and most tedious option, I thought the pink material used for the piping enhanced the pink in the design nicely.
I will also display some of the printed designs as wall art, partly because of time and space constraints but also because I thought it might be nice just to have it as artwork particularly using the shiny fabric.
Once the cushions are finished I will need to photograph them for my display as there will not be enough room to display all the prints as cushions and the fabric artworks. I was thinking about doing this in my local park/woodland where some of the images in the designs where taken. I will then be bringing the images inside the cushions/on the fabric back into the external landscape, drawing parallels between the cushions and the surroundings. This therefore further relates to my theme of Fantasy Vs. Reality as the image within the cushions will be a distorted version of the external scenery and will therefore act as a sort of portal from the real woodland into a parallel fantasy version of it.
Today (Friday 6th May) I printed smaller A5 versions of the designs on each of the fabrics which I used and will use these to make little swatch books. The viewers can therefore look through the different prints and the effect the different fabrics have on them, making the purpose of the final outcome slightly more professional. I am going to make tags that will be attached to the cushions stating the name of the collection of prints for the brand Ted Baker. I will probably start making and designing these next week.
I liked how this looked and decided to do this for at least one of the cushions. It was hard to find the right fabrics and colours to match but luckily I found a purple velvet that went nicely with the leaf pattern and decided to allocate this design with the velvet backing. I have never properly used a sewing machine before so this is definitely a new skill I have learnt whilst doing this project. I also surprisingly found this very enjoyable and will definitely use it more in any future projects.
I am going to have 4/5 cushions in the final display and have made 3 already. So far I am happy with the way they have turned out. On one of them I decided to sew a piping around the edge, although this was the longer and most tedious option, I thought the pink material used for the piping enhanced the pink in the design nicely.
I will also display some of the printed designs as wall art, partly because of time and space constraints but also because I thought it might be nice just to have it as artwork particularly using the shiny fabric.
Once the cushions are finished I will need to photograph them for my display as there will not be enough room to display all the prints as cushions and the fabric artworks. I was thinking about doing this in my local park/woodland where some of the images in the designs where taken. I will then be bringing the images inside the cushions/on the fabric back into the external landscape, drawing parallels between the cushions and the surroundings. This therefore further relates to my theme of Fantasy Vs. Reality as the image within the cushions will be a distorted version of the external scenery and will therefore act as a sort of portal from the real woodland into a parallel fantasy version of it.
Today (Friday 6th May) I printed smaller A5 versions of the designs on each of the fabrics which I used and will use these to make little swatch books. The viewers can therefore look through the different prints and the effect the different fabrics have on them, making the purpose of the final outcome slightly more professional. I am going to make tags that will be attached to the cushions stating the name of the collection of prints for the brand Ted Baker. I will probably start making and designing these next week.
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