12th October 2020

Design

In the pattern cutting workshop I developed a sleeve idea for my jacket, but this looked too much with all the detail on the front, so I have decided to change it to a raglan/dolman sleeve instead. Then I started to figure out how to put the pocket bag together so no seams would be visible, which took a lot of experimenting and unpicking. From this workshop my tutor also suggested perhaps having a zip and high collar rather than a lapel or deep v neck. I really like this idea as it would make the peat and pocket detail stand out more. But I decided to do a round neck like those on 1950s jackets instead. Then I had to find fabric which I was initially worried about, but after searching a few shops in Nottingham I found a grey houndstooth check and blue lining for the pockets to stand out. Sewing it together took longer than I thought, but it always does. The jacket itself was quite easy to put together but I had to figure out what to do with the raw edges. I chose to fold the flaps under and cover the slits with binding made from the same wool fabric. The pockets however were difficult to do and there where a lot of seams close together. Because it was so fiddly, I found it challenging to sew neatly and had to do things again and again to get right. I got there in the end though. But I was not completely happy with the way they turned out as the lining looks baggy inside the pockets. I think I needed to make the lining a little smaller and figure out an easier way to sew them together. As I believe one of the reasons they do not look as polished as the jacket is because they where hard to sew together.

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Research

In the waste seminar today, we discussed the readings. I found the one named ‘Histories of the Dust Heap’ particularly interesting. The little ducks caught the medias attention because of there cuteness and weirdness. But there is so much that is not reported, we throw things into the bin and forget about them. We do not really think about where our rubbish will end up. Similarly, the clothes we recycle do not always get recycled, most goes to landfill. But we try not to think about it as we want to believe we are doing good. These ducks brought the attention that we need to change the way we think about objects. We are ‘public and private identities as citizens, consumers, and organic inhabitants’ with a responsibility towards the things we throw away. It also spoke about how transforming rubbish into something else such as bottles from recycled plastic or clothes from recycled clothes, does not really solve the problem of waste. In the end these objects too will become waste again.

Further on in the book it talks about the historian Susan Strasser ‘waste and want’ and the connection she saw between women and waste. ‘women’s domestic labour makes them the arbiters of cleanliness and sanitation …… women’s bodies in particular are the symbolic boundary between what counts as purity and filth’. These sentences really stood out to me as it reflects a similar feeling of being a both a desirable object and undesirable depending on the circumstances, person etc. But it also shows how women have always had great power over waste. Traditionally women take care of the household and vast amounts of products are aimed at women. We decide what to buy to maintain ourselves and the home. We decide to throw away something because its no longer on trend or the latest model. Clothes, makeup, home décor, appliances, food are just a few of the examples that I started to think about when reading this section of the book.