"My project is a costume which expresses my Austrian heritage which I've designed to be a family heirloom. My main source of inspiration was the Dirndl which is the traditional female dress worn in Austria. The costume depicted a series of navy blue, red, white, yellow, gold and green.These colours are highly significant to the heritage of the traditional costume with these colours representing the national flag of Austria as well as the traditional flower edelweiss. Another source of inspiration was my heritage, being of an Austrian background I made the apron featuring my families crest Herberstein, which was digitally printed and embroidered. My collection incorporates many creative and innovative features.The creative techniques consisted of hand embroidery, weaving, tatting, beading, shirring and macrame.The hand embroidery featured on the dress and apron added texture and significance to the costume to inform the wearer about the origin of my family. I created a fabric through weaving red, white and blue bias tapes to add both texture and design to my project. By creating my own tatted lace work on the bottom of the apron adds to the uniqueness of the costume. The shirring on the waistband of the apron added texture and interest. The innovative techniques consists of digital printing and laser cutting.My family Heirloom was represented on the apron with my family crest being digitally printed, making it unique.The flowers were created using the laser cutter and was layered to form texture and volume.The materials used were cotton drill, voile, tulle, polyester, embroidery thread,shirring elastic and satin ribbon. Through this process I learnt how to manage my time efficiently to complete all tasks to the best of my ability. I learnt how to make a macrame headband, tatting, weaving and hand embroidery. The most difficult stage in producing my project was the hand embroidery, as it consisted of fine and accurate pression when embroidering.The tatting and the macrame where also difficult as they both were time consuming as they consisted of several knots and patterns to follow in order to create an aesthetic look.The most enjoyable experience was the fulfilment when I completed a stage of my project, as my costume had several pieces it was rewarding to see the finished product and the development of each piece come together over time."
