This is a sketch which may or may not end up resembling the final garment!
I have a feeling about a kind of autumn or mild winter coat, inspired vaguely by Gary Graham's designs that I saw on Making The Cut TV show. I never take directly from life or from other folks, but in this case I have a kind of sense of the general structure that Gary's work picks up on, plus his referencing the past. I love how he uses structured heavier fabrics, like denim, to inspire his designs, and how he resuses old textiles or remakes with elements from old patterns.
I love this re-invention, which is more like co-creation/ collaboration, with designers of the past.
photo taken from the book Isle Of Arran Heritage - The Arran High School Project, 2002 (which I participated in when I was in my first years of high school, in the late 1980s)
I love to reference without speaking directly to an element of the past. When I think of shapes in a new garment I'm making from scratch, I often remenisce in my imagination, about older fashions, like a photo of the artist Jessie M King, taken outside my family house in High Corrie on the Isle of Arran, around the 1920s or suchlike: I couldn't find a copy of that photo in particular, but above is the closest I can get to it - of some folks outside the shop in Pirnmill, on the north end of the island, possibly at a similar time. I adore black clothing with white details in particular, from my own culture, as denim came more recently to rural Scotland.
I adore the tailoring and stronger structures of older times, in which the garments were also much more weather-oriented, more practical - and modest! I'll try to incorporate good form and tailoring into this coat, if I am able!
Anyways: just wanted to make this quick sharing, to keep me motivated and accountable: I cannot guarantee I'll finish this coat in the alloted time for this challenge, but I will endeavour to! I am doing a lot of stitch-unpicking, and have sewed one tiny strip on the machine, to keep the thing held together more firmly, whilst I figure out how to join the rest of it together...
