siorai

an online journal documenting my journey from concept development to finished garment.

Monday, June 7, 2010


unfortunately my camera ran out of battery today :( so i couldn't take any photos.
i'll give you the downlow on all that happe
ned today..
I arrived at uni at 10am with my swimsuit in hand.. ready to get four simple jobs done
1. bind all edges
2. attatch QUT logo
3. unpick blue and red stitches (staystitching which is was still visible)
4. hand sew where stitching has come undone

10 hours later and i had
1.bound all edges
2.forgotten to attatch the qut logo
3.unpicked all visible staystitches
4. not yet done the handsewing..

i have spent a ridiculous amount of time sewing this swimsuit

last night i had elasticated all edges using regular overlocking but once bound you could see some of the elastic overlocking stitches coming out from under the binding.
i re-elasticated all edges with a 3 thread overlocker and then trim
med excess elastic away before binding.

I spent ages trying to get binding right as i spent so long on the fabric manipulaton and i thought it would be a pity to let it down with horrible binding!
the swimsuit is nearly finished apart from the qut logo
being attached and the hand stitching.
I'm really happy with how it has turned out
the lovely kate mackenzie wearing toile number 4

Sunday, June 6, 2010


you cant see it too clearly here but some of the shirring stitches are coming undone :(
this final swimsuit seems alot more delicate than the toile, i'm not sure if this is because of the different fabric or possibly that the final has been over handled.. due to all my problems with this one there has been Alot of unpicking going on.
i have tried to stop the unravelling as much as i could, on areas where it has already happened i am going to try some small handstitches which will hopefully look similar and Not crack as soon as someone tries it on!!


Above photo shows the swimsuit after elasticating - it worked!! and the swimsuit is now pretty much the shape its meant to be. I would like the arm holes to be a little larger but i am reluctant to mess around with it as the stitching is starting to come undone where i have been sewing and unpicking and i'm worried about it causing more problems than its worth.

This is a photo of the underarm - I did cut about 2.5 cm away from the underarm but once i elasticated it it became quite small again. it is fine its not like it will cut into the models arm, it is just differing from my initial design.

Some photos of the final with the neck, arms and legs all elasticated - its lovely to see it in its right shape!
These mannequins have such narrow hips , it disturbs me.. and it doesn't really compliment my swimsuit! As you can see in the photos of the lovely kate - the swimsuit does look great on certain figures.


Above are some photos showing how stretched out of shape my swimsuit became. I had tried to bind and elasticate it a the same time but it doesn't work at all. my new plan is to elasticate first with the tension on high so as to gather it in and hold it in shape and then to bind (without elastic) afterwards.. i hope it works!
The night before the swimsuit was due and everything was still going completely wrong. i ended up twinneedling the legs just so that they would be finished enough to present.
Above photo shows the out of shape neckline

Wednesday, June 2, 2010


As you can see in this photo, my final swimsuit came out much larger than my toile. Wendy had the great suggestion to mould it straight onto a mannequin to get a smaller shape rather than recutting it. this worked well and it was also more fun then pattern making.


I chalked around the edges of the patterns and then used pins to indicate difficult corners or curves. After this, a stay stitch is sewn about .8
I had to sew bits and pieces of the fabric together to make the right amount for the swimsuit.

Design development






Some different ideas that i was having for design development. for final designs i have used a contrast of heavily manipulated fabrics with simple garments and clean lines.

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