House of Architecture Millinary

Bradford Project Brief

For the Bradford Textile Society Competition I have chosen to enter "Fashion Garment Textile". The brief is as follows:

A fashion fabric, which may include a combination of processes, designed for a specific outfit or garment collection.
- Fashion illustration of proposed garments should be included.

Unit 5 Repeat and External Project

Next term I am developing my knowledge, skills and understanding of weaving. The emphasis of the unit is to enquire, problem solve and to find a personal approach to my chosen subject. The set syllabus will ensure the following:
Generating ideas/creative problem solving/decision making.
Develop and sustain my own approach
Range of research methods/apply them to my practise
Awareness of the weave industry/theoretical aspect of woven cloth/where woven cloth exsists in the fashion industry.

My aims of this unit are to involve myself in different ways to generate ideas, explore new ways of problem solving. I will need to push my independent reflection further as well as explore the idea of career planning. Focusing my research methods to those relevant to weave. I aim to create a indepth application of techniques, processes and materials.

My assesment requires a body of studio work, research files to include reflective thinking and a 2500 word text on my chosen title.

This term I plan to:
- Engage in an industry placement.
- Develop an understanding of the market of woven cloth.
- Establish who I am as a designer.

What am I doing all of this for? What is my work about?

Design ethos:
Fine line drawings are always an inital start to my research, simple monochrome, to capture the intimate details.
I have always been interested in the construction of textiles and garments. Structure plays a vital role within my work. Colour pallets always involve soft pastle greys and range towards more vivid tones and often based on pastle hues. These colours come from a wide spectrum of research ideas, from ceramics, art, fashion trends to cultural beliefs. Development brings manipulation of fabric into my work, whether its combining diciplines, pleating or deconstructing my cloth. Over all my collections of samples explore different weights of cloth, paring woven cloth with digital printed fabric designs aimed at the forth coming fashion trends.

Previous work:
My most resent work was based on the
Natural Form, involving inspired cotton
and linen slubby cloth manipulated with pleats
based on a
Chanel Tweed. Pastel colours were
teamed with vivid autumn hues of purple
and blue within the digital print which
accompanied the woven cloth.

Architectural Influence:
Parallel steel frames will influence my line drawing.
Glossy, transparent, or smooth yarns will be the base
of the cloth. The parallel line of the weave structure
will reflect ridges, line, and scale, whereas pleats reflect
structure and shape.

fashion project

After my previous work being based on pleating, I have chosen to continue this into my next project! I have asways enjoyed manipulating and structuring fabrics!



Due to having a few spare weeks I have chosen to set myself a short project in which to develop my ideas and skills further. This project could kick start research ideas and intial bases for my work in the new term. My intial ideas have come from architecture from around the city. I intend to explore the structures and lines of the buildings and transfer this ideas into garments.

Fashion Lecture

Freelance designer Susie Petrou teaches fashion and textile students at Brighton. Her lecture brought awareness of the importance of visual research and development processes. The main points which stayed in my mind were the importance to be aware of the ever changing fashion world, to get involved with as much as possible, to engage with many ideas, concepts and skills! Petrou has taken a Ba in Fashion, and two Ma'a one in Textiles and a second in Fine Art Photography. I have realised the importance knowing why I am doing my Ba Textiles course and to work out what I want to achieve from it, where will it lead me and what skills will I need, in order to achieve this!
Even though Petrou started out as a freelance designer, her skills and development of knowledge of fashion, textiles and photography, over the past years has allowed her to design knit wear, be part of the Next design team, to work to WGSN as a trend prediction researcher, as well as being a freelance photographer for small fashion companies and exhibiting her own photography work in serveral different galleries. I have seen that so much can be acheived if you have the passion and the drive to achieve.

Fashion illustration research

Presentation preparation

LO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the key principles of, and context for your subject.
To further my development I also explored dying my own fabrics in different weights and manipulating them with my pleats. I feel the closer tighter pleats work well, however my drawign featured lines of verying distances appart, which I also created in my folds.

Paco Rabanne worked with folded paper begining in the 1960's. His work has inspired me to work with different weights of paper and to explore folding the paper in differernt ways. The paper holds well and remains in shape. I worked from my inital drawings from my sketchbook when manipulating the paper.
Development brought pleats into my work. I double clothed warp allowed me to create ribs and pleats of different sizes and my cad design on Illustration allowed me to play with how to apply pleats to my design design. I played with different pleat techniques at differnt angles and widths apart.



Tone, gradation, blurring, smudged, washed, blend, layers, over lapped, pastels, bolds,
lines, structure, grooves, curves, dashes, folds, dabs,

On Monday I have to do a presentation on my work as part of my assessment. I want to include the following points: Where my inital ideas came from, my development of these ideas, and how I represented my work into my chosen context.

Final Context

I am really pleased with the end result of my final context board as i feel they look professional and clearly state my intended context. I researched Chanel to be my main fashion House who could use my cloth, however I also found Prada and Louis Vutton to also use similar textured fabrics.



I chose these two fabric samples as I feel they acheived my aim for a pleated, textured fabric inspired by the lines, and a fabric to show gradarion of tonal colour.

Visual inspiration boards

My inspiration has come from a variety of different natural form, from shells to fox gloves flowers to button mushroom. Along the way I found artist to inspire my drawing techniques such as Monet to Turner to contemporary artists such as Sally Cummings and Emma Trimmnel. Later in my work I developed my work into manipulation and came across interior design as an influence, contrasting the natural form with man made influences!



Through out my work I was continuously inspired by colour, with an ever developing colour scheme. I began with pastel and when I turned digital I found excitement in colour swatches and Pantone colours! I ended up with two very different colour pallets, pastels and a purple colour scheme for my woven cloth and bright Strong colours ranging from pinks to royal blues to terracotta and browns. I do feel I could pull my colour scheme together in future for my work to work in harmoney.

Other work

I used digital drawing more than pen on paper drawings as these were quicker, easier to play with colour and tone. I could use a range of effects at the touch of a button, and do a number of ideas in the space of minutes that would normally take me an afternoon. However I feel my porfolio lacked tradational drawing and next time I will ensure I will make the time to produce these also!!






For my weave development I like to create hand woven test pieces using photocopies of my inital drawings. This helps me to see if the colour ways work, the density of the colour blocks and also different textures that I could apply to my cloth. I enjoy working in this medium because its quick and easy to arrange, photograph and then rearrange into another compotion. I will continue to use this through out my projects!

Initial woven samples

Woven fabrics to compliment digital prints

Digital Artwork Final designs

Digital Art Work

My development for my digital prints has been vast and I now need to select and focus on a selection of final designs.

For my development I have started to research fabric structures such as pleats and other forms of folding. So far I have come across Alexandra Verschueren, whose work I admire greatly.

Fabric design

This evening I have been developing skills on photoshop. Mostly I have been appling filters to my photographed images in order to pixulate and distort them in order to reflect my drawings. I have also created my own brush tools taken from sections of my digital artworks, as a means to create patterns and texture. I have begun to create an idea for my digital print designs, however I need to develop a concept and investigate placesments. To do this I have now been working with creating my own patterns using my photographs and rotating and cropping as well as playing with the opacity levels.

Before I continue to develop my work I need to work decied in the style of print I want to create.
So far I have looked at the work of Jonathan saunders, with his use of bold simple stripes as well as creating my own using my photographs to create strips of colour to manipulate.

Development

The past two weeks I have spent creating a double cloth warp in preparation to weave. I have learnt that more time and pacients is need to create such a cloth and I shall not be doing it again. If I could I would use my two warps separtately. I always try to push myself to do something a bit different, but in future I want to keep my ideas simple.

My drawing has developped well and I have had some interesting outcome, but I now need to push these further before I apply them to my cloth. After introducing a new techniques of drawing I have refreshed my drawing skills and provocted some interesting outcomes. I have also researched the liked of Monet and Turner as well as Pointilist for inspiration. I love the dashes and splodges used to build up the layers of colour. I love the way certain colours stand bold and how texture is created. I have enjoyed working with acrylic paint and gaouche due to the colours I can create and how layer upon layer can be added with out effecting the paper unlike watercolours.

Personal development planning

Interior design placement

LineOne Interior design studio: These photographs show the fabric which I arranged for the interior design companies front of house displays. I chose thres wall papers which I felt were striking and would appeal to the range of clientel, as well as to show Line Ones look and style. I was also given samples of faux fur to arrange with a display. Each display showed colour concepts, wallpapers which would work together, a selcetion of fabrics for furnishings as well as wall coverings and surface tiles. This task allowed me to explore how fabrics and materials can work together, and to work within a context. Each display was aimed at a different interior, night club, wine bar, retail or private homes. In relation to my bussiness and professional skills, the workplacement allowed me to see how an interior design studio opperates, where fabrics are sourced from, ways of producing mood boards, as well as how to put a collection of fabrics together. This being the greatest accest to me, as currently I am working towards creating a small collection of fabrics for my deadline in November. I throughierly enjoyed my day at Line One studios and feel I gained confidence within my self as well as in my own textile practice.

Research conclusion

My research has broaden my ideas to digital design with the focus being tone, line and texture.
Tones taken from the shells and flowers have introduced my colour scheme and provocted me to explore further my love of gradation of colour. I have researched the artist Jepe Holman and my workplacement at Jonathan Saunders' brought to my attention new ways to use colour.

Personal development planning

Having a week out of uni, I feel off task and need to quickly get back into the swing of my work. The two weeks prior to my placement I was very uncertain of the direction in which to take my work, however after a group critique, and a week in the design studio, my thoughts and ideas have become clear. This term I wish to explore a variety of digital processes to see the advantages of each, however I need to push my skills in a particular area and I feel weave would currently be my strongest discipline. I have decided to focus on an out come of a selection of woven and knitted fabrics, which I can go onto place in a context. This week I need to conclude my research stage, and move on to delevlop my ideas and begin to sample. I need to focus on my theme as well as explanned it to its full potential. I hope to have a productive week!

Workplacement

Last week I had my work placement at Jonathan Saunders. I was a runner for his design studio. This involved assisting the design team with day to day tasks and running errands. I have travelled across London to collect the latest collection, to delivering fabrics to factories and returning pattens. By being in the studio I began to understand how a design studio operates, with the different departments with everyone having their own roles to play, to seeing the step by step processes it takes to create a collection. This week, I learned the value of digital processes used withing the design process, from Photoshop and illustrator to digital print designs. I have realise how essential it is be confident in design programmes, due to more and more stages of design being made digital, rather than hand produced. Digital is certainly the future of fashion and textiles.