What in the world is a dart??- Apparel design 1

Hello everyone!

*See disclaimer!

I usually don't start off my posts with pictures, but I decided I would today. Because I am going to talk about darts! No, not the throwing game- which I am very good at by the way, but I digress- but the fitting element in a garment. So you see those triangles in the picture above that look cut away from the bodice and skirt? Those are darts. They are strategically placed on the body where it curves or moves, in order to let the garment move with the body and still maintain fit, because nobody wants to feel like they have no shape, or they are a rectangle, because nobody is a rectangle. Every person on God's green earth has a shape, and it deserves to be dressed with the best fit possible. So you fold those triangles over each other and stitch the triangle closed. The bottom picture shows this. *Disclaimer! In my fashion class, backstitching is a very big NO-NO. When ending a seam line in our class, we drop the feed dogs and stitch in place for just a few stitches, which makes a little knot. This makes a little less bulk than backstitching does.       Okay now that I said that, I can go on. Both men and women's clothing have darts, because all garments need to fit somehow. Or else we would all be wearing paper sacks. So darts can be moved around, so they won't always be in the same spots in every garment. That would be boring. Dart manipulation is when you either make many darts out of the one, or combine more than one to make a huge one. It really depends on what you're making, if you want a lot of darts or just one, but a key thing to remember is they just can't go away. No matter how much you want them to disappear, they can't. You have to do something with it. So there are other options than just darts, you can do pleats or tucks, or gathers or things like that. You'd do gathers for example, if you were doing something really flowy and airy. You wouldn't want a random line just sticking out from nowhere. Darts are cool that way, you can pretty much do whatever with them and they will still give you that fitted element into your garment. Okay so now you know what a dart is, I will find some pictures to show you what I am talking about.

So they converted that one triangle that we
saw in the first image to 3, for their desired
effect.

Looks like they converted the waist and bust
darts to gathers, to make it more flirty and girly

With men's slim fit shirts, the darts
can go in the front- because they need that
extra fitting

Aren't darts cool? :) yay for fitted things! So I think that is good for the basics on darts, perhaps I'll do another post later that goes more in depth about things :)

Vivre la mode, tout le monde!

New posts for a new class: Apparel Design I

Hey there everyone :)

I just want to start off by saying, I wish days were longer than 24 hours! I feel then that way I would be able to get all of my things done! Like blogging. I wish I could have done a few summer posts about summer clothes, (hopefully everybody rocked some colored skinny jeans :)) but alas, I had many other things to do. But luckily, for another one of my fashion classes we are encouraged to start blogging again. So yay!

So the content I am going to talk about today is about the design process, or more specifically, getting inspired. This chapter in one of our textbooks for class was so interesting. Everyone sees the end results of the creative process with the final runway shows, or art exhibits, or a song. But no one sees the steps the creators took to get to that final stage. So i'm just going to talk about it a little bit. Oh, and maybe you yourself can even translate this into your own wardrobe. You'll see what i mean by the end :)

Inspiration can come from anywhere, really. I get inspired by music mainly, experiencing new music is really fun and different. I think of like a story to go along with the song in my head, and sometimes the things my pea-brain comes up with is cool lol. But also when I go to art museums and look at paintings and things, I get really inspired by the shapes and colors. I almost want to create a garment based on the piece that i'm looking at. Colors and textures inspire me, i like mixing things together to see what i get. Wearing clothes is almost like putting together a puzzle, there are so many combinations to choose from, but only certain ones fit or look good together. So trying out different combinations is always important :) mix it up! Color combinations are always a good way to start if you are trying to spice up your day-to-day style. For example, If you like one certain color, try wearing an outfit of all monochromatic colors. But use different shades of said color to mix it up.

The Glee character, Emma Pillsbury (yay Glee!) did this outfit wonderfully. She took one color, perhaps she was inspired by the sun or eggs or something, and used different shades of yellow to break it up and make it not so overwhelming.

Another way to get inspired is to change your surroundings- go outside, sit in a room in your house that you normally don't, take a back route to class, just to change your perspective a bit. So let's say you did that and sat under a tree, thus getting inspired by a tree. So you can incorporate this inspiration into your look by color most easily, but also by texture. If you like the texture of the bark, perhaps go for a tweed skirt or a nice structured pair of wool pants. And if you like the breeziness of the leaves, go for a light material in a top. Mixing textures is a really fun way to get a different look out of an old outfit.

At first glance, this looks like a boring white dress. But look closer, the top is lace and the bottom has some lovely pleats. This look mixes textures very well, and could be a great way to take your inspiration and put it into your personal style :)

That's all for me right now, but I will be posting again soon, i promise!
Vivre la mode, tout le monde!