We all want to be more green these days, especially with what we wear. Avoiding fast fashion by buying pieces that are designed well and built to last. However, this isnt always as easy as it sounds. Where is it made? What's it made out of? Who made it? How many miles has it travelled? Is it sustainable? Is organic fabric better than recycled? Argh!!!!! I would try and tick all those boxes and usually end up with a plain white Tshirt. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a white tshirt but a girl needs a little variety.
I decided to try and design my own, even though I am not a fashion designer or anything near expert sewing skills. I have been slowly adding bits and bobs to my wardrobe and I thought I'd share some of my designs inspired by Welsh cultural history.
The Dress
I stumbled across this dress in the Amgueddfa Cymru Online collection and I thought its shape and pattern were beautiful. It was made for a participant in the 1922 Harlech pageant, designed by Herbert Norris, a famous costume designer of the time. It is hand painted and would have been super fashionable in it's day; giving medieval, 20's, Gelert the wolf hound (from Welsh mythology) Vibes.
Check out its wearer strutting her stuff in this incredible recording (Watch from 0.41 secs)
I love this dress so much and I have had it in the back of my mind for a long time to recreate in some way or another. I really love the exaggerated sleeve holes and diagonal lines along with the hand painted Animal. I have decided it is a wolf and attributing it (very amateurishly) to the Beddgelert Myth. I can just imagine the designer hand painting this huge wolf on the front of the dress, the style more like that of a stage backdrop than of fashion pattern design. Love Love Love it. I still plan to make a shorter dress in the future but I thought I would have a go and recreating this glorious Wolf.
Process
I have used Canva for a few years now designing paper crafts and stuff for social media posts so I thought I would do all the technical bit on there. I started though my making hand drawings of the wolfs face and the elongated 3 feather shape which I then scanned in. I then took out the background, leaving just the outlines and then uploaded them to Canva.
I would be happy to go into further detail if anyone would be interested. Comment below. But briefly imitated the diagonal line with the basic pattern on the dress then added the wolf head. I am really happy with the design and the beauty of designing digitally is that it can easily be edited and used in many ways.
The Bag
Why a bag? Well, I'm between jobs at the moment and I can't afford to have my own fabric printed but I could swing the price of little cotton bag and bags are always handy. I could have printed through Canva but instead I chose to go through Teemill because their products are made sustainably in the UK, of organic cotton. It arrived yesterday and I love it. What do you think? I can feel a Pageant Wolf hoody coming on.
Made for my personal use only
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