The Joy of Making - Architecture Inspired Skirt Design

One night some weeks ago, I just couldn’t separate from a soft, weaved textile. It was 02.30 in the morning, I was tired, but I still kept pushing the “over-lock’s” accelerator and letting the long bond of off-white wool slide through my hands. I couldn’t just interrupt the process I was in the middle of, before I knew if the “stairs”, or “waves”, would have the suitable weight and width in order to achieve the motion I expected! Eventually I went to sleep… and dreamt about folds.
During the PhD course in Oslo we spoke a lot about “research by design”, while on the course I took at University of Gothenburg the main theme was children’s “aesthetic learning process”. At the both of courses an important discussion was how the process of making, design and play, involves mind, feelings and body. How powerful is the “joy of making”? It provides us with possibilities for research/learning through the process of design/aesthetic process.
In order to learn about my “evolution of thought” during the night with the “over-lock- machine” and woollen fabric, I wish to reflection about the decisions I made - a micro research-by-design. Some of the choices were intuitive, some were aesthetic, some practical…

Inspiration was there first – but I didn’t realised where it come from before I already was in the designing process. Here I’ll try to give short descriptions of the inspiration sources, and choices I made during the process of designing and making.

Material quality and function: I wanted a winter shirt to mach my off-white coat. The textile had to be solid (not-stretchy) and weaved because I wanted to cut it in a curve, from the corner of the fabric, in order to fit my body-shape (hips). The light colour of the fabric had to be natural (not bleached), and have no weaved patterns.

Inspiration 1: Some months earlier I bought a pear of leather glows, with a nice combination of colours, and elegant folds. I knew that such folds could be made in any textile quality, but a wool textile, damped and ironed would be able to retain them the best way. This requires a particular thickness of the fabric.
Inspiration 2: Architect Børre Skodvin, held a lecture about his architectural practice. He showed some images, and among them an image of a three-dimensional model of a unbuild building. Different floors had different organic shapes, so that each balcony had unique access to sun. In the model the balcony rails were made of corrugated cardboard – and inspired me: sets of short parallel lines along the continuing organic, non-symmetric curves….like waves…

Material colour: I found the textile just thick enough, but not the same material in two different colours, to match the glows. That’s why I decided to use green nuances of tread colours. To achieve a ruff style, I let the edges, casted with over-lock, be uncovered. I experimented with different combinations of colours of the four treads - the contrast to the fabric off-white mustn’t be too large, but strong enough to underline the shape of the lines, and repetitive to preserve the entirety of the composition.

Proportions: I evaluated distances between waves – they should appear casual (like waves in water). I studied the size of the top part – which was supposed to remained “silent”, except for the simple lining where the over-lock edge was repeated. The size of this part was evaluated in proportion to the placement for the waves, as well as to the size and repetitions of folds.

And there were, of course, some technical decisions to make about the lining, order in cutting, sawing, experimenting, and probably about more that I do not really thing about… I guess we all sometimes do things automatically, by knowledge, experience or intuition (?) I also guess that much of my skirt-making has become a part of my tacit knowledge, since the first time when I, 12 years old, designed and sewed my first woollen skirt with folds….