The Stupidest Brief Ever

The aim of this brief was to take a piece of old or worthless clothing and modify/customise it in a manner that would make people smile when they looked at us wearing it.

My garment of choice was tricky as it happened to be a very dark polka dot skirt, with little in the way of space to draw on with the exception of the circles of the polka dots. Because of this, I chose to look was ways I could physically alter the skirt as a whole - such as turning it into a lampshade or a UFO. Due to the time constraints I decided something on such a grand scale (and considering this isn't a textile course) was unachievable - however, the alteration of the polka dots was not.

Rowena suggested perhaps turning the dots into hamster wheels, which in turn lead to a string of ideas, such as drawing little rooms in them filled with furniture, or just simply turning them into faces. A personal favourite of mine was to paint a white chocolate buttons wrapper on the skirt, and making the spots look like edible buttons.

This idea then became synthesised with another idea I had regarding turning the dots into small cats - after all, what makes the general population smile more than adorable cats? After speaking with Matt, he suggested that the wrapper was almost redundant, as it worked quite nicely on it its own - so instead of a wrapper I dipped the corner of the skirt in white paint to make it appear as if the kittens were spawning from the white blobs of paint.

Painting the skirt was an interesting and somewhat challenging task. Because the fabric was incredibly bobbly, it made it difficult to acchieve a straight or neat line with the acrylic. It also required maybe a good two or three coats, as the acrylic went on quite thin - though this was not achievable given the time constraints I had to finish the final product. If given longer i'd have probably prepped the surface a bit better with a razor to get rid of the bobble, and also give everything a good 3 or 4 coats to make it extra opaque.

Overall though I was very pleased with the end outcome!! It's actually made me consider keeping the skirt to wear on a regular basis. A lot of people seemed to appreciate the cats and most of the responses I received regarding it generally were based around it being cute which was definitely what I was aiming for. Only time will tell as to whether or not the kittens shall survive a wash and dry cycle.