Research into Modern Gypsy Wedding Dress Traditions

As part of this year’s assignments I have to write an essay exploring an area of my choice. For my research I decided to look at gypsy weddings, with a particular focus on the dresses of both the brides and bridesmaids. As with most traditional weddings, the wedding dress in a gypsy wedding is an extremely important aspect of the ceremony.

Most people are familiar with Channel 4’s programme ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. What many people are not aware of are the books that have been published on the subject since. These books go further than the programme and offer a closer look at traveller lifestyle and culture.

Thelma Madine

One of the most recognisable people in ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ is Thelma Madine, who has also written a number of books about her experiences with the traveller community. Thelma is a dressmaker and business owner whose shop ‘Nico’ in Liverpool has attracted many traveller families over the years. Thelma is known for producing all types of dresses for special occasions including for weddings, communions and christenings.

Thelma Madine and a member of her team

I have been researching using Thelma’s and Jim Nally’s books to get a better understanding of modern gypsy wedding traditions and culture. This has included looking at some of the most popular styles of wedding dress amongst traveller brides as well as the reasons behind them wanting such extravagant designs.

Below are a few examples of the kinds of dresses that are popular with many traveller brides.

Quilting Project

So it’s been a little while since my last post. The first year has finished and now I’d like to catch up and write some posts about the projects from the first year that I haven’t already covered.

After the Weave project, we moved onto a Quilting project. This was a group project where each group had a different theme and “nothing flat” was our theme. As a group we chose our colour palette at the start of the project but we then found that we went off to work independently. The only time we actually came back together as a group was in the final stages to present it. In hindsight I think that if we had chosen our groups ourselves we may have worked better as a team throughout the project.

My group's colour palette

Quilting by definition is to pierce through two or more surfaces. This gives a lot of flexibility to people using this technique as you do not just have to stay with traditional stitching.

As part of the project I had to create 15 or more samples using our chosen colour palette and within the theme of “nothing flat”. We could go back and use knit, weave or print techniques to create these samples. The aim of this project was to help us to decide which path to specialise in for the remainder of the course.

Machine embroidery and fabric manipulation.

Multi-coloured plain weave on the loom.

Multi-coloured plain weave close-up.

Free-hand machine embroidery and beading.

Fabric manipulation using machine stitching.

To create my samples I decided to use weave, embroidery and fabric manipulation techniques. I really enjoyed experimenting within these techniques to develop my samples and this helped me to decide that weave was the path I wanted pursue.

Sam

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Weave Project

Weave is a project that I was really looking forward to because it was a completely new technique to me.  We started off with a colour study by trying to replicate some complicated images from magazines using only red, yellow, blue and white paint.  The real aim of this first task was to perfect colour mixing to achieve the right tones and shades.  Every time I mixed a colour, I painted a stripe of that colour.  When this was completed and I had all of my colours together it gave me a really good idea of how the colours work together.  This task later came in useful when thinking about colours and weaving.

To weave I used a 4-shaft table loom.  As a group we first began by learning to weave using 12 different techniques.  This gave me an idea of how everything worked and a feel for each of the techniques.  I cut off the practice weave and was then set the task of weaving a metre of experimental weave.  I had to choose a colour palette from one of my colour studies which I then used for this metre of experimental weave.

My final outcome of this project was 5 ‘concept pieces’ where parts of my weave would be sewn into a shirt.  To get to these 5 pieces, I designed 16 different concepts of how I could use weave in the design of the shirt.  Of the 16 designs, I chose 5 that I thought would work best with the width of my weave.

I decided to stick to the same colours as I had used in my experimental weave as I thought they worked really well together.  With my colours chosen I began to weave for the 5 concept pieces.  I wove 2 metres in total to use.

To make up the concept pieces I also needed another fabric.  I chose blue denim with gold in as it was a heavy fabric that would work with my weave and chosen colour palette.

The next part of the process was for me to cut the pieces that I needed out of my weave.  To do this I needed to pin my pattern pieces onto the weave and sew around the pieces.  This stopped the weave from fraying apart when I came to cut them out.  Some of the woven sections of my shirt included a button stand, cuff, yoke and various panels.  I cut my weave in different ways so that it could be used both horizontally and vertically and I also cut a piece on the bias.

After all of my pieces were finally sewn together I chose to embellish them with beads and buttons.

We also needed to have an illustration board as part of our final outcome.  My board had a Chanel bedroom background which I placed my illustrations of my completed shirt on.

I really enjoyed this project and learning the process of weaving.  Initially working with the woven fabric was challenging but I got used to it in the end.  I was really happy with the outcomes of this project.

Sam

Fashion Illustration Research

So I’ve recently handed in my critical research report to uni for marking. For those of you who don’t know already, my aim was to see what impact modern computer aided design has had on fashion illustration. Through the course of my research for the essay I looked at a lot of different illustrators and illustrations from past and present, like the one from Vogue that you see below.

To really answer my question within the word limit of the essay I had to select just a few illustrators to concentrate on. The ones that I picked demonstrated various amounts of computer aided design in their work, from David Downton who uses very little, to Bree Leman who uses software almost exclusively in the creation of her designs. Of course there are illustrators who use a mixture of mediums to get the results they want and so illustrators like Cecilia Carlstedt featured in my final essay too.

Cecilia Carlstedt

During my research I was really lucky and found some excellent interviews online with professional illustrators. This gave me a great opportunity to get some of their opinions on different mediums including computer software.

David Downton

One of my biggest fears about doing a degree course was the writing side of it because I’m very out of practice. This essay was my first in about two years and was very daunting for me initially. I found it hard to choose a subject as we had the freedom to choose whatever we liked. Once I had the idea of fashion illustration, something that I’m interested in, and began doing research it became a lot easier to focus on. Now that it’s all done and handed in I feel a lot happier with it and so now I’m just waiting for my grade and feedback.

Sam