Surface Design for Fashion

Our brief for the fashion module was to create final garment shapes with the potential to sell at the Indigo Trade Show in Paris. I based my work on the Eden Project as I had visited it on holiday in Cornwall and I found it was so beautiful. It also fit perfectly with one of the S/S14 trends from WGSN.

 My Work Bay at College

 Mood Board

 One of my photos from the Eden Project, I used Photoshop to change the colours

 The drawing of the photograph

 Another drawing of Daisies from Eden drawn in the appropriate colours

 Research

 Layout Experimentation

 Final Garment Shape: Top

 Final Garment Shape: Skirt

Interior Layouts

Our interior side of the project is based on Period Styles and my chosen style is Rococo. We created drawing sheets using books for research and then had to create layouts using the drawings by playing around with shape. Our final layout will be put into repeat, drawn onto a kodatrace and put onto a screen to print a 3m length.

Design Centre Chelsea Harbour

The main reason for going to London was to visit Design Centre Chelsea Harbour which is a showroom for fabric and wallpaper companies and all things interior. The launch of all the new season fabrics was also happening while we where there. It was to coincide with the interior side of our module and I really loved it. We where free to wander around the showrooms at will and order samples from different companies.

Zandra Rhodes' Studio

It was brilliant to go and see inside a working studio, I am sure though that Zandra’s is one of a kind. It is cram packed with everything to do with Zandra’s career which started in the 60’s. In the print room there isn’t much room to move around the table and all her screens from the 60’s to present day are kept there along with repeat sticks and everything to do with printing. She has a team of 7 people running her studio alongside her. Zandra’s print designer, Maria Cooper, is an ex student from my course so it just proves that anything is possible if you work hard.

London

I’ve never spent time in London properly until now and I have to say I absolutely loved it! We went to Zandra Rhodes’ studio, Libertys, Oxford Street, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

My only wish is that we had more time and i can’t wait to go back again!

 Free Starbucks :)

 Liberty's

King's Cross Station

These are the links to the Liberty’s and Victoria and Albert Museum websites…

http://www.liberty.co.uk/

http://www.vam.ac.uk/

Introductory Surface Design

My next module is called Introductory Surface Design and it is split into two parts, embelishment for fashion and print for interiors. For the fashion side we have to create 3 embellished garment shapes, so i’ll probably go hand embroidery and the for interiors we have to create 2 final painted out designs and then print a 3m length. I’ve never printed on that scale before so I’m interested to see what it’s like.These are some of my floral drawings which are going to form the basis of my fashion embellishment.

Paris

Whilst in Paris I got to explore and do the touristy things like going up the Eiffel Tower but I also got to visit the Les Arts Decoratifs (Decorative Arts museum) and the Louvre where i saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.

 The Eiffel Tower

 Les Arts Decoratifs, which covers anything from furniture to textiles and photography to graphics, It also had a Barbar exhibition running.

The Louvre, It’s huge and we didn’t get to look all the way around all though I did visit the Ancient Egyptian section and conquered a few fears.

I really enjoyed Paris and I got to see the city and some very beautiful buildings and shops. Louis Vitton on the Champs Elysees was amazing, it was set over different levels and was brilliant.

These are the links to the Les Arts Decoratifs and Louvre museum websites.

http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/

http://www.louvre.fr/en

Indigo Trade Show 2012, Paris

The main reason for visiting Paris is the Indigo trade show which is held every year at the Parc d’Expositions Paris Nord Villepinte. Our college exhibits there every year and sells work to companies in industry, predominantly fashion. Two pieces of my work were chosen to go and I’m pleased to say one sold to Desigual!!! It was my Sunflower embroidery, the one I loved the most but it has gone to a good home. If you’d like to take a look at Desiguals designs and garments, here is the link to the website.

http://www.desigual.com/desigual/index.jsp?storeId=store_gb&locale=en_GB

It was a brilliant opportunity to see what goes on in the industry and to see what a trade show is actually like. It also helped me with the fashion side of my new project as I was able to find out the trends that had been predicted for Spring/Summer 13. My favourite parts as a surface pattern designer where Premiere Vision and Indigo as they where the shows that sold fabric. Expofil is for yarns and fibres, Le Cuir A Paris for leather and fur, ModAmont sells all your trimmings and Zoom deals with garment manufacture.

It’s a brilliant place for people involved in the fashion industry as you can go through the shows and get everything you need for the design and creation of shoes and garments. Here are the links to the shows websites.

http://www.premierevision.com/en

http://www.indigo-salon.com/

http://www.expofil.com/en

http://lecuiraparis.com/

http://www.modamont.com/

http://www.zoombyfatex.com/

Print Finals

These are my final pieces for my print  project. I’m very happy with how they’ve turned out and i and I enjoyed my time in the print room. On a personal level though I’m just happy that my prints all worked to a certain degree as I felt slightly lost at the start.

Todays Work Bay

Print and Embellish Files

These are some images from my print and embellishment files showing my embroidery and print samples.

 Reverse Applique

 Machine Stitch

 Machine Stitch

 Backstitch

 Minerfoam Flock

 Discharge Printing

 and Foils.

I had learnt most of the embroidery techniques before but i was reminded of how much i enjoyed it, as for print, it was something totally new and when you get into the rhythm of it, it just flows.

Summer Show...

These are some photos of my work and me/my family from my final show at college. My project was based on 148, Oxbridge Road, a house where my relatives live. I have used the deeds and documents from the house to create a house tree along with using images of the house and family members and their pets who live there. My work was printed first, then machine stitched and hand embroidered. I then suspended the frames from the ceiling to highlight different parts of the work.

Collage...

This is work from one of my college projects that is looking at text. It is a combination of material, acetate and tracing paper and uses print, stitch and drawing to create the composition.