19th February, 2013- Exhibition day

Today was the exhibition day at our school and we had to present our creations through a stall and a board in the P.E hall throughout the course of the day. On the 18th I headed down to school and started setting up my stall. I only managed to finish putting up my information for the display board since I did not want to leave my clothes on the mannequins at night due to safety reasons so I decided to set up the mannequins on the morning of the 19th. I spoke with Mrs.Wahba, my supervisor on the 18th and asked her if I could get a second board to put up the rest of my clothes and she said that was possible.

I included pictures of myself wearing the clothes and accessories I created and information such as what is sewing, my sewing experience and tips for sewing to be put on the display board. I also put up my green and white tote bag on the first board with the information. I used sticky tape holders with hooks to put on the board and then hang my clothes with hangers.

On the second board I put up a section called first stitches with all the little pieces I first sewed on my first sewing lesson. I also put up my printed silk pants, red fur coat, floral print shorts.

For the full mannequin I put the grey fur coat and pink pencil skirt and paired it with a store bought indian embellished top to make it a complete look. On the half mannequin I put on the gold leather vest and silver leather skirt which made a good combination. I received a good response overall with people telling me that it was an original idea and that it is fantastic to see that teenagers are able to do this and that my designs are very appealing and are worthy of being bought. I was very pleased to hear that people liked my clothing and I hope that I can continue to make them and hopefully start selling them in the future.

17th February, 2013: Mini Photoshoot of clothing

Today I decided to have a mini photoshoot just outside my house with myself wearing the clothes and accessories I have designed. I paired the products with store bought items to make them a complete outfit. All photos were taken by my mother.

Grey fur vest and  silver leather skirt made by me

Pink pencil skirt made by me

Red fur vest and green/white tote bag made by me

Silk print pants made by me

Gold leather top made by me

16th February 2013: Mannequin

A textile shop in Murshid Bazaar ( China Market)

Today I headed down to Deira to buy some mannequins and hangers for my clothes to be presented at the exhibition on Tuesday. I went to a market called China Market which is located right behind the gold souk and after searching for a while I found two shops selling wholesale trading items which included mannequins. I opted for one shop called emirates wholesale trading since it had cheaper prices and I ended up buying one   half mannequin with a stand and two hangers with clips.

I plan on putting the gold leather top and silver leather skirt on the half mannequin and the pink pencil skirt, my own top and the grey fur coat on the white mannequin I'm getting from Mrs.Bland at school and the red fur vest and the silk print pants on the board with the hangers. I will put my green and white tote bag hanging on the side of the display board and the print makeup case on the table. I also plan on putting my pillow case skirt and all the little things I made on the first day of class on the table.

My table will have my laptop with the online process journal, a bowl of candy, my sewing machine and my book process journal. On my display board I plan on having blown up images of me wearing the clothes and information such as what is sewing? how to turn a pillowcase into a skirt, ten tips for sewing and some other information that I have yet to decide on depending on how much space I have.

23rd January, 2013

Today I had another meeting with my project coordinator, Mrs.Kerry Wahba to discuss details about what I should be putting up for the board on the exhibition day, go over my products along with the product criteria and any other questions I had about the project.

I met with her at 3:30 p.m afterschool and I first showed her my red fur vest, silver leather skirt, gold leather top, green and white bag, pink pencil skirt, print makeup case. She then told me that she liked my products and they were quite wearable and I told her that I would finish hemming my leather skirt and fix up my zip on it and she told me that if I could get those done by the 19th of February which is exhibition day then she could give my products a full 4 which is the highest criteria so I am pretty excited about that and plan on finishing it earlier. I wrote down a draft criteria before hand and Mrs.Wahba told me that the personal project journal states that the product criteria does not have to be very detailed so she helped me cut down on the details and gave me a simpler version which I think makes it easier to understand as well personally.

Next, I told her about my idea of making a small lookbook or book version of this journal because people might find easier to flip through pages of a book rather than scrolling through endless pages of writing and Mrs.Wahba told me that it was good idea to do so also because on exhibition day there might be power outages because of excessive power use and I might not get a table position near a cable connecting port so my computer could die down and I would not have anything to present except my products which is not good.

Lastly I talked to Mrs.Wahba about what exactly I should be putting up on my board on exhibition day and I need a title first of all and then she told me to try to make my products 3D for example hanging my bag on the side of the board or putting tissue paper under skirts to make it stand out or possibly even use a mannequin which would probably look the best. I have a lot to plan and decide about how I present things because that is also graded so I will look around shops to see how they have arranged their clothing on walls etc and get ideas from it.

30th December, 2012

Even though I already listed out what my collection would consist of, I realized after a while that making two of each item was pretty boring and so I re planned my collection to make it more interesting and flexible for me to make so that I had time to sew and study.

My final collection will consist of:

One silver leather skirt
One gold leather tank top
One pair of printed silk pants
One pair of floral print shorts
One red fur vest
One grey fur vest
One print makeup case
One green white tote bag
One pink pencil skirt

29th December, 2012: Print makeup case and gold leather top

Today I finished off two more components of my collection which were one print makeup case and one gold leather top.

For the print makeup case I did not purchase any commercial pattern so I decided to google it and find a diy website. I found a very helpful tutorial from http://www.designsponge.com/2010/09/sewing-101-zippered-case.html. The instructions were very straight forward and I finished the bag within minutes. I used a blue lining fabric and Je T'aime print for the outside.

Again for the gold leather top I did not purchase a commercial pattern and so I decided to take a risk and make my own pattern. I took my own leopard print sleeveless top and traced the shape onto the gold leather fabric which was folded into half to give me 2 pieces, one front and one back piece.

Next I pinned the fabric and cut out the pieces.

I then sewed the sides of the top starting from the bottom of the armholes and sewed the shoulders and I was done with the top.

28th December - Part 2 of leather skirt

In today's lesson I continued on with sewing my leather skirt from the previous lesson and I had the help of my teacher, Mrs.Jennifer. Since I had already cut out the pattern pieces last lesson all I had to do this lesson was to sew it. Since I had already sewn a skirt before, this was no different and the pattern instructions were easy to read and understand.

I sewed the side lines of the skirt first and then moved on the waistband. For the waistband I had to take one long strip of wide leather and then place it over the waistband area and then sew it to give a firm support. I had no problems during this because it all involved me in making one straight stitch and one zig zag stitch for extra support. I then made an opening for my zipper and using a zipper foot, sewed in the zipper. I didn't have time to hem it so Mrs.Jennifer told me to hem at home.