HOORAY FOR ME!

i just handed up everything for marking.

AND

Adelaide Fashion Collective did a profile on me and a few of the other ladies in class...

check check check it out everybody.

http://www.adelaidefashioncollective.com/aff2010

now all i really have to worry about is-

1. hoping my garments don't get handed back to me because they are all wrong and i need to remake them all.

2. what I will wear on Saturday.

3. walking down the catwalk at the end of the show on Saturday night.

i plan to face these 3 challenges in these three ways-

1. cross my fingers

2. I'm going to make my outfit for saturday night as unfortunately tens of dollars doesn't by you much these days.

this is my inspiration-



... but this is probably the reality



sorry folks, that's a bit rude. if i'm gone before christmas comes, tell santa i love him.

i'll just be one big bundle of nerves on saturday night that i might need a few to calm myself.

oh and for number three I can barely walk in a straight line on a good day (i'm fairly pigeon toed) i'm just gonna cross my fingers and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye that I don't stack it.

...or look like danny devito next to a model.

less than a week until the big show!

we had fittings on thursday, everything went fine for me. majority of my designs are made of jersey. stretch. clever me.

the only thing i'm debating is whether to lengthen my skeleton dress, it's very short and i can't help but feel sorry for the girl who has to wear it. she is a model though, i'm sure she'll be fine.

i am nervous at the moment. i feel like there's still so much to do. just getting everything sorted and organised ready to be marked. i said to myself at the beginning of the year 'now ashlee, you put those patterns in folders and label them properly! you know you'll end up losing half of them if you don't.' to which i replied 'shut up. i'm sweet, i know what i'm doing'

oh my. dinners ready.

One more day until everything has to be handed up. Well truly we have until Tuesday but the official date is tomorrow and that's when I plan to hand all mine up.

I actually did my last piece of machining today. Hopefully it was the last piece. It all depends on how the fittings go tomorrow, if it doesn't fit we have to change it.

At the moment everything feels a bit blurry, I've been here for 3 years now and for the past 3 years my life has been Tafe. Lame? Well its had its ups and downs but overall it been pretty awesome. I only have one and a bit weeks until its all over. All over in one day. It will be nice to sleep and eat though.

less than a week to go 'till we have to hand up all garments plus patterns and toilles!! (i never know if I've misspelled that word because spell check doesn't understand french and I'm too busy to check)

naturally I have had a very busy week, all day everyday!

very exciting news! armour&heart has received a teensy little bit of media! it's only small but the most she's ever gotten!

...sorry all my sentences are ending in exclamation points, it's starting to look like a Mills and Boon. i can't help it. I'm! Just! So! Full! Of! Energy! At! The! Moment!

OK now I'm going to pick up my leather for my final piece. PEACE.

I cleaned my room last night and found my camera so now it's time for some sneaky peeks into the life of armour&heart...



my work area. it looks messy but I assure you, its a very thorough and complicated organisation system.



my 6 original outfits in fashion illustrations, throughout the pattern making and construction stage i have made some changes to the final garments.




[love.]



part of the dress that I made yesterday. armour&heart wedding dress.

So only 4 weeks to go. It's all happening now. Am I on track? Ask me later, it still feels like I've done a lot but not much at the same time.

Got my photos back from the shoot last week (thanks Phebe and Jane), they looked rad, I am very happy with how they turned out.

When getting our pages together for the parade catalogue we were asked to write a paragraph or two about our collection. At first I struggled with this, I found it hard to some up something that I've spent most of this year with, something I love and hate at the same time. I didn't want it to be to self promoting or sound like I was writing about my cardboard panda enclosure that I made in year 7 society and environment (my name is ashlee and i made this panda enclosure because...)
After at least 20 minutes of hard thought and concentraion I decided to hand this task over to someone else, an outsider with an unbiased view of my collection.

Take it away Miss Benatar....

attempted my marketing project today, got sidetracked, started thinking about music choices for my parade and ended up watching T-Rex vids.



just amazing.

We're meeting with hair and makeup kids this afternoon. I have ideas.
I want white eyebrows, My model Jane has dark eyebrows, is it possible to do without bleaching? I also want crimped hair, is it possible to do even though it isn't 1987? or the short relived trends in the early 90s and early 2000s (britney spears stronger vid - check check check it out!)
These are all questions that I can and WILL ask this afternoon.

Ashlee OUT!

Took this picture today, i drew it using an old plastic stencil ruler.

Procrastination is truly an art form.

No, i spent a few hours working today, mostly down in the cutting room, bangin in my snaps (pick up line? evenin' ladies, which one of you would like to bang in my snap?). Actually a process in which I use a hammer to hammer in snap buttons to my body harness, in the end turned out pretty much exactly how I imagined it but maybe it does look a little like something the human centipede would wear when you took he/she/she/them out for walkies.

ahhhh
I haven't blogged for a very long time.
I've started to sew my actual, proper, totally for real this time garments.
I wish I could show photos, but I can't exactly find my camera.
I think we're in something crazy like week 7. Though it feels longer and shorter at the same time.
I'm on track, I have pattern made and toilled all my garments and started the real things.
I have a model and photographer ready to shoot. bang. bang.
I have made a few adjustments to some garments, just to make them tie in better to the collection.

Here's my design brief. It's a bit cheesy, but hey, who doesn't like a gouda piece of writing every now and then?
(cheese pun)

With the rise of fashion inspired sport such as roller derby and sport inspired fashion from designers like Jeremy Scott, a growing demand has emerged for a stylish look in any playing arena. One that can translate from court to catwalk, from feild to street, from sports club to club chair at your favourite cocktail bar.

Soft excercise wear has been inspiring designers since the 70’s. The glamour tracksuit has already been done, wearing trainers everywhere has been acceptable for decades and it would be hard not to find leggings in any (i really hate to use this word but...) fashionista’s wardrobe.

It’s time to take it up a notch and protect yourself.

Protective sportswear originally inspired by armour has been a relatively untouched inspiration resource when it comes to fashion. With the world being a tougher place now, a girl’s got to protect herself. What better way than to wear an armoured suit, right? This theory isn’t as simply practiced when you consider the cost of either a traditional suit of armour or a full bullet proof outfit - it’s completely ridiculous to think that such garments would be facilitated in everyday life and in a full suit of armour you would look like an idiot. Armour’s not just about protection; it’s also about giving the allusion of a more defined, stronger body shape, with the purpose of warding off any potential threats or enemies.

The brief is to design a collection that consists of six outfits that give the allusion of protective armour as well as being fully functional garments that can be broken down and worn as sporting wear or stylish statement pieces. This means using a variety of materials. Soft, stretchy knits that will allow the wearer to move freely and unrestricted for times of fast action and thick, hard non-fabrics to protect and emphasise the parts that need it most. Padding will also be used as we all know that even the toughest of the tough still fall down sometimes.

What also needs to be taken into consideration is that although the aim is to create a modern day suit of armour, the wearer still is a human being with feelings and emotions, not a passionless robot with a shielded heart. So each outfit needs to expose the wearer somehow without being exposing. It needs to show what lies beneath the surface, the body's own natural armour, bones, and what they're protecting, your heart. Without compromising any protection to it or putting it under any threat of being torn out or broken.

(That was just me getting a little carried away. Ofcourse I don't think that a cocktail dress is going to protect somone from getting their heart torn out. Idiana Jones in the temple of doom will help you with that one)

Favourite.

Finished trade flats. Finished story boards. Finished tafe.
Found my vinyl. Found some paper.
Fundraiser on sunday. Hong Kong wednesday week.
Will start pattern making soon.
I promise.

first.start.

new day. new blog!

Trying to inspire and be inspired. Getting harder everyday.

I keep on going off on a tangent thinking that I've stumbled upon something amazing only to take a step back and realize that it has nothing to do with what came before it.

Stay on track!

You can do it!

Go! Fight! Win! Cheer!