Adding a little flare

 Observing the skirts worn by the women during the war, and I came to a conclusion that pleats, especially big box pleats were loved by them.

               

Source: glamourdaze.com

Exploration

So I took inspiration from these skirts and decided to create something on my own using these box pleats.

I also noticed the use of large buttons. So I went ahead and combined the two.

Beige and Army green: the most used colours of the time

 And this is the final outcome. 

Gold buttons add metallic touch

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Explorations

Its 11.50 pm right now. And creative juices are flowing. I decided to start exploring with the shapes and figures.
Here's what I've come up with till now.
         
                  
 More stuff coming very soon! 

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Threads

I'm surprised at how many possible outcomes can be achieved from the criss cross or check pattern!
I'm back again with a new swatch/exploration. As silk was banned during the war, I decided to use silk. It's like an homage. 
In this one, I started out by cutting rough strips of beige-gold silk fabric. then i began layering them in a check pattern. The layers by themselves looked pretty. 
But it still needed a little punch of texture.
So I went ahead and placed grey coloured thread in a randon manner, but still making sure that it looked like check pattern. 
And here it is, a quick but pretty looking swatch!

XOXO
See you!

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Random placements

I have decided to take the criss cross pattern one step ahead. While i was exploring the possibilities of the materials that could be used, I tried making some sort of arrangement using toothpicks too.
And surprisingly, I liked that. I began placing them first, in a neat organised manner, and then randomly.
I then decided to go with the random organisation, because placing them neatly felt, well, too predictable.

Explorations using toothpicks

I liked the idea of layering this one with tissue paper as well. 

I finally decided to bring it all together. And since my whole life has become a war zone + fashion street, I decided to paint over this swatch with a camouflage effect. 

And Voila, Here is the outcome!

Camouflage print

See you in the next post! 

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Criss cross Update

Hi! 

I hope you remember what I was upto with the last exploration. I was playing with the criss cross pattern from ropes and then layering it with tissue paper.

Well I finally painted that. I used deep rust-brown colour. And on the embossed rope areas, i dabbed some mustard yellow paint using cotton. I'm in love with this.

This is the end result of the texture that i came up with.

See you very soon!

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What the swatch?

Hi guys! So you know now, that my theme is World War and the essence is the silhouettes and the colour scheme. But do you know what really inspired me to choose this essence? Well, it was the texture found on the helmets of the soldiers. It truly left me awestruck. The design in itself was so attractive that I didnt have any second thoughts about chosing this as an inspiration.

One lazy day, when I was busy doing everything interesting I could possibly do, I was reminded that I had to make swatches for my project. And the first reaction I gave was literally "What? Noo!!"

But you know, it wasn't all that bad. I instantly decided to make my first swatch inspired by the trendy helmets. So there I was, with sunboard,  a pair of scissors and all the ropes which I could possibly ask for, from my mom. After using these ropes for my swatch, I felt like something was missing, and this could only be changed by a layer of tissue paper over it. So, tee hee. A layer of tissue paper which gave it a more realistic look. Now, all that was left was some colour. Using nuetral shades (which totally match my theme) I gave the final touch and felt like I actually

had the helmet right infront of me! So this was the journey of making my first swatch and it was full of hardwork and fevicol! xD

Yayy me!
Catch you later guys!

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Criss and Cross: Texture play

Hi again!

While going through the images taken during World War II, I came across this one.

Source: segundaguerra.net
And this really gave me some good ideas. I love the net made from ropes that covers the helmets of the soldiers. I immediately started doodling what I thought I could do with such texture.
 Here is some of the work that i came up with while trying to recreate this texture :)

I used whatever material I had at hand to create different patterns and textures using mainly criss-cross pattern.

Ropes used to create pattern layered with tissue paper

I'm still working on this one. Will be posting really soon!

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