Project Runway

Tween Fashion Week ended with Project Runway. We watched episodes of the show during break time throughout the week. The class was split into three teams of two. Each team was given a garbage back full of non traditional sewing supplies and were assigned a theme. They had an hour to work on a design using the materials enclosed. No help was given from the teachers. It was great to see them problem solve with the hard to use supplies. The models walked the runway in front of the judges and teams were interviewed and questioned just like on the real Project Runway show.

 

The winning design can be seen below. These girls were given tissue paper. They used the other supplies in the bag to create a print on the tissue paper. The finished design even had a matching hand bag. The model totally owned it on the runway. So proud of all the girls!

 

Generation "T"ie-Dye

Did we stop at creative tie-dye techniques? No! We went on to even more creativity with our tween fashionistas. I checked out two GREAT books from the library.

Generation T 108 ways to transform a T-shirt
and
Generation T beyond fashion 120 new ways to transform a T-shirt
both by
---->megan nicolay

Check out these cool altered shirts!! This kids looked fabulous. It was a lot of work for one finished piece of clothing but SO worth it.

Creative Tie-Dye

What would Fashion Week be without a little Tie-Dye. We decided to forgo the traditional tie-dye designs and their rubber band friends and opt for spray bottles, eye droppers, and paint brushes. We used a wax resist product to help enhance designs and create even more variations in color.

One of our students is a Dr. Who fan and created the Tardis on her shirt. It was awesome! For those of you Who fans out there you can appreciate this. Doctor!

 Some students attempted the "galaxy" effect using dark purples and a variety of blue shades. Wait til you see what we did next with these awesome shirts. This was only step 1! Stay tuned.

Galaxy Shoes

The kids really wanted to make "Galaxy Shoes" this week as part of their Fashion Week experience. What's great about limiting my camp size this year to maximum of 6 kids with 2 teachers is that this ratio allows for students to customize their experience. It started out that 2 of the girls were interested in the galaxy shoes and once they started all the girls were on board. We found some great resources online. Check out the links below the picture to see how you can make your own galaxy shoes.

Nicole's (one of our students) tip: add glitter glue to the finished project for a more twinkly galaxy. Thanks Nicole! It looks awesome.

 

Galaxy Shoes Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdAosXPGfkM 

http://haleytaughtmehow.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-make-galaxy-shoes-with-pictures.html

Creating Fashion Boards

If you are doing any kind of camp I HIGHLY recommend encouraging all your students to bring portable tablets or laptops. One of our projects for Fashion Week was to create a fashion board with a specific time period theme.

Favorite website for the kids for this project was http://www.polyvore.com/
They all created their own accounts and started making sets based on current trends they liked as well as fashion from favorite periods in history. Having access to the internet in addition to the books I had on hand from the library helped with this projects required research.

To make our Time Period Fashion Boards (TPFB) we used butcher paper to cover foam board and created a stand flap in the back. Students created mannequins out of more butcher paper and then colored one color. We used tacks to attache the mannequin to the board allowing for movement at the joints.

Tracing paper was used to make patterns and then patterns were used to create the styles seen below. This was a GREAT project and took much longer than I anticipated which works for me because they really got into their role of fashion designer.

Fashion Week Begins

Last week was Kids Create Art's Fashion Week for Tweens. I always hit the library for tons of free resources! Always Always Always check out the library first!

We started off the week creating our fashion sketchbooks "altered book" style. The kids loved turning an already published book into their own unique style. In the sketchbooks students took notes about fashion, created outfits out of the print and designs found on the pages in the books, and took listed key facts about time periods they were interested in.

A great exercise was having them draw 5 - 1 minute gesture drawings using me as their model. Each minute was a different pose. I remember doing this in college and I loved being challenged by time.
I started researching fashion lesson plan ideas and found some great links. Check them out on my Pinterest account at this link http://pinterest.com/kidscreateart/the-art-behind-fashion/