Marie Moore
1207 Andrea Way
Vallejo, CA 94591
Senior Project Board of Judges
New Technology High School
920 Yount St.
Napa, CA 94559
May 2, 2007
Dear Judges,
For my senior project, I chose to make a dress. I am hoping to go to FIDM for college, so this type of project would help me gain some experience in the field that I am a planning to get into. I haven’t had much experience with sewing, the most I had ever had before making this project, was sewing a button that fell off, or trying to sew my old pants into tight pants.
This project really pushed me to do something that I’ve never had much experience with. It made me really appreciate the things I take for granted, such as having someone to help me, and having someone instruct me with what today. Making my senior project helped me learn to appreciate my parents, especially my mom who covered the expenses. I learned that patience, and a steady hand, are probably the 2 most important things to fashion design. Doing this project forced me to look outside the box, and learn how to do things by myself. My mentor is one of my favorite people in the entire world, and it’s my mom’s friend, her name is Cora Cleofas. She has been a friend of my mom for the longest time, and I always value her in the highest esteem. She has always helped me when I was fighting with my mom, and she is one of the greatest artists I know.
I plan on pursuing fashion design in the future still. I feel like I really learned a lot, and I gained a lot of experience that I know was worthwhile. While you read the rest of these pages, you will learn how I went through the experience, and how important it was to me. Thank you for taking the time to read this, as it means a lot to me.
Sincerely,
Marie Moore
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Project Process Paper
The project I decided to do was fashion design, but more into the dress design aspect of it. In the beginning I was very indecisive in what I was going to do. I went and talked to my mom who lives in LA, and she said it would be nice to do a dress, and I thought about it and decided to do it. I then began to sketch the dress I wanted to make. At first it was really hard, because I just really had no inspiration for anything, I kept making drawing dresses that I knew that I had seem before, and I wanted to make something out of the ordinary. I began to research online about new and upcoming fashion trends but to my disappointment I wasn’t able to find anything good at all. Then I began to watch music videos from a while back, like one of my ideas was to make a huge pouf 80’s Madonna-ish dress, but as I got closer to the 00’s in my videos I became more interested in the style. Then one video managed to catch my eye. It was the “Mr. Brightside” video by a band called The Killers. In the video there was this really beautiful girl who wore these really beautiful 18th century France inspired dresses. I found it very interesting that the video drew it’s inspiration from that time period, and the costumes in the video were breathtaking, drawing from French culture that I really wasn’t exposed to. As you can imagine the first thing I did was start sketching away. It took me about 7 tries and lot of erasures to make a design that I really loved. I called my mom right after and told her what I was trying to make, and she really didn’t understand it, so I promised I’d show it to her next time I was in LA. When I went to LA in December of 2006, I began to talk a lot with my mom’s friend. My mom’s friend is named Cora, and she is someone I am really close to. She is close enough to our family, that I even call her Tita Cora, which means auntie in tagalog. Coincidentally she happened to be really good at sewing and designing things. She used to be an interior designer when she lived in the Philippines, but ever since she moved to the U.S. she began working at a fabric place in Downtown, Los Angeles. I was happy because I was able to find a mentor for my senior project, especially someone that I was comfortable with. A barrier I had to overcome though, is that she hardly speaks any English, so I had to talk to her in Tagalog most of the time, it was really hard to communicate, but overtime I learned more and more words, and I even think that I can now understand just about every word. The first thing that I really needed help with was learning how to use a sewing machine. I had learned to sew by hand when I was in 5th grade but I was hardly good, and in fact in the beginning of the school year I sewed my own pants and it looked horrible, and I’m even embarrassed to wear them now. I showed my pants to my mentor and she laughed and placed them on a hanger and hung them in my kitchen at my house, which is where we would work. My mentor came to my house everyday, getting my fabric for my project and teaching me all different kinds of fabric, like silky, chiffon, satin, cotton, spandex, etc. This is where I learned how to get swatches for fabric, and we compiled them together and were satisfied with the result. My design was a gold corset top with black lace along the bottom and top of the corset, and for the bottom, it would be a gold skirt with a layering of sheer crepon fabric on top. The dress would be topped off with a top hat to complete the look. On the first day of actually working on the dress, me and my mentor drove around LA to gather all the materials, the first place we stopped at was Jo-Ann’s fabric in Glendale, CA. We spent about a good 3 hours trying to figure out which fabric would go well with the dress. We ended up buying some Baroque Satin that was gold, and some organza that was the same color as the satin. Then we drove all the way to Downtown on Saturday, which as you can imagine is the worse traffic ever, and I was really annoyed with everything, but I learned how to be really patient and I just started talking to my mentor about everything, and she was convincing me to go back to LA, and I promised I would as soon as my senior year was over. We were stuck 1 hour in traffic and we got lost in Downtown. In Downtown we were going all around trying to find a store that was selling an already made corset, because we realized it would be near impossible to make my own corset, we went up and down the fashion district and couldn’t find a plain white one, so we had to drive all the way to Beverly Hills to get one. I also bought some gold dye the same color as my skirt and dyed it when I got home. Dyeing fabric was an adventure in itself, it smelled really bad, because on of the things I had to use was vinegar. The kind of dye I had to use was Fiber Reactive dye. The process went as follows, I wet the corset by putting it in under the faucet, and while I was doing this my mentor was heating up the dye in the kitchen, in a huge pot. Then I dipped it into the pot when it was ready, we got the mixture up to 120 degrees, and added vinegar, and left it in there till it turned into the color, I wanted and we waited and let it sit for a few minutes till it cooled. After a hard day of work I really just wanted to sleep, so I said goodbye to my mentor and went to bed at about 7 PM. Early the next day my mentor arrived, she discussed what we were going to do with the top, I felt that it was too plain and that I should add some lace to it, so my mentor and I went to Jo-Ann’s again to by some black lace. That entire day, I spent all my time trying to figure out how to sew the lace on without ruining anything, so my mentor showed me how to do it on the sewing machine. Although I know it’s not perfect I think I did good job on it. Later that day my cousins came over and congratulated me on doing a good job so I felt really good about everything. A week later, we began to work on the skirt, which I admit is the hardest part. The fabric was really hard to work with, and I felt like I was doing it wrong, but I had made a pattern earlier to help me when I messed up. I sewed the sides of the fabric together and made the bottom part of the skirt, it took me a couple of hours to get it right and it ended up not being as poofy as I thought it would, which ended up looking way better that I had planned. My mentor helped me sew the top part the next day and apply the metal clasps to close it, which was fun to work with though it was hard to do it right. The top layer of fabric, was the most annoying to do, because if I didn’t fit it perfectly I would be in a lot of trouble, but after a few tries and measuring it about 10 times I got it right and sewed it as fast as I could. I finished my project by the end of winter vacation, and I must say it was rewarding to me and gave me a lot of experience that I know I will need for the future.
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Project Reflection
My project was a learning experience for me. It really helped me connect with my family again, and it made me really appreciate what my parents do for me. I moved out in the summer of ’06 and I must admit coming here has been this huge personal experience that has taught me a lot. Senior project gave me a reason to go home and connect with my mentor, and appreciate others and what they do for me. It really affected me in a good way, and in a big way. I never used to appreciate much when I was in LA, I’m an only child and I get whatever I want, I ask my dad for $100 and I’ll usually get it, I had my mom take me to school and pick me up everyday on time. But ever since I moved to Napa, I had to do everything on my own, and it’s been really hard, and sometimes when I’m really depressed I have no one to talk to. Yet, I learned how to do things for myself, and I can be really independent which is something that I never had the chance to do. I moved from LA because of drama, and my best friend since 2nd grade had passed away, I felt really lost in LA. I felt that my high school friends weren’t there for me, and that they were fair-weather friends, who only came around when they needed something, or when they had problems. I lost touch with a lot of people who meant the world to me, and I just really didn’t know what to do anymore. That’s why I chose to move, because I really just needed to get away, because I knew if I moved somewhere where no one knew my name, then I can really find who I am. My mom called all her friends, and her close friend in Vallejo had an extra room that I could stay at. I know it was painful for my mom to let me go, but she knew that it was something that she had to do. Ever since I’ve been here I learned what I set out to try and find, I needed to know that there were people in the world who aren’t going to judge you but what brand of purse you use, and what type of shoes you wear. I needed to learn that I can make friends without being fake. I needed to learn that I can do things on my own, and I won’t die, or fail, or falter. I needed to learn to appreciate everything in my life, because life it too short to spend it in regret. In the end, making this project help me love my parents for all they do, especially my mom, because even though she can nag me a lot, I know now that it’s because she loves me and doesn’t want me to fail. I also learned how to talk to people that I really have nothing in common with, such as my mentor, because I found out that if you don’t give people a chance, you won’t be able to make a new friend or see how wonderful some people are.