Before choosing an era to focus on I did a basic search on the internet of every decade in the 1900's to see which era I found the most interesting to work on. My chosen era was the 1920's. I chose this era as I was intrigued by the style and culture of people in this era and thought I could explore the era more because I didn't know much about it. I found when researching that the flapper style was very big in the 20's and that a lot of the women wore sparkly hair accessories, bold make up and straight dresses. This would have been a great focus for my bunting as it represents the 20's really well. I also found that dance was very popular, more specifically the Charleston and that celebrity actors were the influence of women's dress sense and style. Even though these were fun topics to explore I decided to focus on 1920's silent film. I chose to look at silent film because the actors from silent film are still very well known and they are easy for people to recognize in the modern day. I also chose to focus more on comedy silent film because the posters and film covers all have bright coloured illustrations and pictures that would be good to replicate in my designs.
For the project I have done secondary research on silent film on the internet and I have done some primary research by asking my parents and grand parents if they knew any actors that were popular for silent film in the 1900's. Through doing the primary research I found that Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd were all well known and well recognized comedy actors for silent film.
The main influences in this era were World War one because it happened just before the 1920's, politics as women got the right to vote, flapper as it changed the style and fashion and silent film as it evolved into the talkies (when people started talking in films). These factors played a big part of making the culture in the 1920's and I thought it best if I focused my designs on one of these influential events.
When thinking about my designs I had to develop some of my research ideas so that my bunting would look the best I could possibly make them. For my Charlie Chaplin design I had to take some more parts of his film covers and add them to my designs as some bits looked plain and I had to change some of the colours so that other aspects would stand out. On my Laurel and Hardy bunting design I had to add there famous quote on to Laurels coat so that I could include it in my design. For the Harold Lloyd design I had to cut parts of the clock off and Harolds leg to fit the image as it was bigger than the original painting. Then for the film roll design I developed my ideas by taking small images from the tiles they used to use for dialogue and adding then to the bunting to fill some negative space up.
When I came to making my pieces of bunting I had my designs put on to some magic touch paper to heat transfer onto the calico. I then embroided back into a few of the pieces or worked back into them with fabric pens to define some of the colours more. I have done these techniques before in textiles but I have never worked back into them using fabric pens so that was a bit of experimentation that I did.
Altogether I think I have managed my time on this project well and have done extra pieces because of my ability to make sure that I could complete any work set. I have tried to do a piece of work in each lesson and if it was incomplete I finished it during my independent study. Knowing that it was a live project made me more determined to get the work completed on time and it also made me put in more time and effort with all the pieces as I wanted them to look as good as possible. It definitely pushed me to do the project well and keep up with the deadline as there was there was a lot of pressure to do well for the college and the client.
I am very satisfied with the outcomes of my bunting and the overall project. I am pleased with the bunting as the designs look bold, and the colours have not faded so are bright and easy to see. The project was very satisfying as it was great to see the development and transformation of my ideas and designs throughout my sheet work. If I could do anything differently I would experiment more with the fabric pens and make the writing on my Laurel and Hardy bunting tidier. Also I would make my Harold Lloyd look more realistic on the bunting as it looks like a cartoon and I would make a effort to write more annotation on my sheets. I have loved working on this project and can't wait till the bunting has been sewn together. I will be looking forward to seeing my displayed in the Civic along with everyone elses.
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