I really loved my 3 weeks at the Amanda Kelly studio, I felt like I really learnt a lot from my time there and it really inspired me to work on and update my portfolio, although I have not had the time yet! I was really amazed by the embroideries there and saw techniques I had never thought of using!




I was set a little project of drawing sketchy flowers ( I took photos of them below) inspired from the catwalk. I then got to see these put  into a final design which was really interesting.

I was really happy with these drawings as I have never tried to draw flowers in such a stylized way before and I would like to experiment with more styled drawings. Being able to see the stages of the design process and even some of the simplest textures being made in to really gorgeous prints has opened my eyes up to designing differently and really making the most out of any mark making and  that strengthening my Photoshop skills would be really important!

New Home!

I have been so busy since leaving Uni, from New Designers to moving all the way to London!


New Designers went really well and I enjoyed exhibiting and the opportunity to talk to others from the industry, it was also really nice to spend a week with my friends. About 4 weeks after the exhibition I was contacted by one of the companies that viewed my portfolio, which resulted in me driving to Leicester and I was given a brief which I posted off yesterday! It was designing embellishment, editing photographs and also combining the two together to create t-shirt designs for Next, one of the brands that the company supplies too. So I look forward to getting some feedback soon and seeing where this leads me.

This is my first blog post from my new home in London! We had such a nightmare trying to find somewhere to stay, some of the places we looked at were disgusting and we both doubted that we were going to find somewhere nice! After finally finding a flat we both loved and the landlord saying no to us because we were not working in a bank or anything (even after offering FULL years rent upfront!!!) our lovely estate agent hunted the most amazing flat in Bow! It is a first floor flat with 2 bathrooms, 2 double rooms and a balcony! I have been here 2 weeks today and I'm feeling really settled in.

 My first placement starts tomorrow at Amanda Kelly, so I am really excited for the next 3 weeks!! - but not so much taking my portfolio on the tube!!

Keep Designing...

I still have 7 weeks before I move to London (when we find somewhere to live!), and to keep me busy I have started sourcing materials like dyes, fabric and paper so I can keep designing. I started researching new trends but before I start something new I wanted to see if I could use some of the designs I did not use from my final major project to create more illustrative designs.

One of my favourite designs that I did not get to use is this one. It was originally two different stick and ink drawings that I placed together using Photoshop. I really like the marks that you can achieve using this method and also how its quite a simple drawing but still has a certain amount of detail.

I want to use the design to embroider or paint onto fabric, I can visualise it being used on a t-shirt or jumper.

Final Results!!

I was so nervous today to finally get our degree classifications, I was up checking at midnight and again from 7am, but the results finally came online at 9am and I can not put into words how happy I was to read the words...

Bachelor of Arts in Textiles and Surface Design with First Class Honours!!!!

It makes all the late nights, hours and materials invested in the past 3 years worthwhile!

BA Hons Textiles and Surface Pattern Class 2011

This photo was taken at the opening night of the exhibition, it was such a great night and everyone was really proud to show off all of their hard work. It seems strange that its over now, apart from taking everything down and going to new designers, I hope we all manage to stay in touch through blogs and I wish everyone the best of luck in the future! Thank you for an amazing 3 years guys x

In the Press!

There I am in the middle with some of my dresses while we were mocking up the layouts of our degree show! It is nice to be in the paper to show off something I have worked so hard on. The exhibition is on till the 18th June so there is still time to come and visit!

Degree Show

Final Pics

These are some of the pictures of the denim jacket on a mannequin, I think it looks really good professional, I am really happy with the final outcome.

After finishing the neon bone and adding washers and clock parts, I decided to add a scatter of these under the bone shape on the fabric. I decided not to add more stitches or large sequin shapes on to the fabric as i didnt want to distract too much from the amount of work that had gone on to the bone.

I did still want to make my own sequins using splashes of colour. I used Photoshop to select and layer splashes of dye or paint that had been scanned in along with my drawing sheets and then photocopied this on to acetate. I experimented attaching the sequins together and found the best way would be to pierce each sequin with a  needle and use a tiny little split ring which would still allow the sequins to move. I only wanted the top sequin to be attached to the garment and the rest to hang freely. I also decided to push some of the clock parts through the sequins to tie in all of the different areas of this design. I felt that this brought it all together more as well as still being mix matched.

This is the final finished garment! After playing around with length and composition of the hanging sequins I think the finished design is really strong, works really well and I think this is my favourite design out of them all.

Denim Jacket - Finally Complete!!!

After going back to the jacket in between other garments, I finally finished it. I added more embroidery and embellishments along the side of the garment and around to the back, more cluster to the neckline and creating separate feather sequins to overlay the denim wings. I was finally happy and satisfied that the jacket was complete.

 After cutting the pocket off the left side of the garment I decided to sew it back on to the collar. I really like this idea and feel that it works really well because it is quite unusual.

I ordered sequin roll from Josy Rose and punched my needle through it to create a hammered effect and the couched down the discs on to the jacket. I feel it gives a metal plate effect.

I started adding raised satin stitch, safety pins and hanging chain from them.

Final Few Days

I can not believe how much embroidery I managed to do in the last few days of my final major project, I even managed to do some dresses in just one day, but staying up till 4am! So I have not really had much time to update my blog and get the rest of my designs up, so I am going to start doing that now!

I mentioned before about struggling with embellishments on my digital fabrics, I felt a bit like that with this design too. The original design was created from mirror imaging one of my detailed drawings of flowers. I then changed the hue and saturation around on Photoshop till I was happy with the colours. I extended one part of the image to look like an abstract spine, so it would fit in more with my bone and fossil theme.

This was the drawing I manipulated on Photoshop.

After testing and sampling different colours I decided to go for a lime/neon green colour with hints of pinks and oranges as the colours worked really well together and fit the design. To pick out detail in the print I sampled sewing turquoise embroidery floss over lines in the petals. It worked quite nicely in the sample but when I came to do it on the final piece it did not work well and I found it too distracting.

What did work well with stitch was picking out the more luminous tones on the darker areas of the design.

 I felt quite lost on what to do with my fabric, but remembered seeing at Indigo trade show in Paris a fashion digital print length that had just been covered in clear sequins and it worked really well from a distance and looked like the sequins were printed or coloured. I started to layer over clear sequins keeping it symmetrical and decided to pick out the middle of the design. I also added tiny holographic purple sequins to bring out the purple dye splats and green crystals around the neckline of where the design would sit.

The design now has over 1000 clear sequins on it!

One Week Left!

Finished another final today! Which means so far I have 5 totally finished and another 4 that are nearly finished, a few of them just need a few sequins stringing on so hopefully I can get everything done! Out of all my designs, this was my least favourite... until I pinned on to this mannequin, having it pinned around the shape has totally transformed the look of the design as the shapes on it really fit the body well I am really happy with this design even though I struggled with it at first. With it being digital print, adding embroidery to it made me feel like I was just filling in parts and not really adding anything to the design. I ordered more sequins from Josy Rose (http://www.josyrose.com/) picking amazon green and metallic reds as I knew that they would really stand out on the design with out making it look to halloweeny.

Sequin close ups,

Whale Bones

I used a sketch of a whale skull from the Natural History Museum and made it more abstract after being inspired by Manish Arora, I painted and filled in the inside shapes using block, clashing pigment colours contrasting nudes with neons. I really like the idea of 'treasure and trash' as I like to mix sequins and crystals with nails, nuts and washers. Again I painted the hardware using nail varnish and spray paints. I think the colours are a lot brighter than the other bone shape and the chain is a nice finishing touch to the design. I feel that this works really well with my mix match brief and used a symmetrical design so I could break the rules with unsymmetrical colours and embellishments.

Continued..

I started to embroider and embellish into the bone, sewing around the edges so it was permanently fixed on using contrasting neon threads. I used contrasting colour to the nudes like greens and blues and then tried to use more neutral colours on the neon pink such as pale pink washers which i sprayed and light beads and sequins. I used chain and embellishments to parts of the bone. I am so happy with the finished design, the washers add a weight to the fabric and the tiny cogs give a quirky twist. Once the garment has been made up I plan to scatter more washers and clock parts around the fabric with french knots, stitches, negative shapes of sequin fabric and home made printed acetate sequins. I'm really excited to continue with this! Also used the super macro setting on my new camera to take these close up shots of the embroidery, I am well impressed with the detail and colour!

Neon Bones

I have used bones and skeletons from the beginning of this project (and my minor) as my main source of visual research, this project I wanted to make them less obvious and abstract them.
I exposed several line drawings of bones I had drawn from the Natural History Museum and screen printed the outlines on to fabric. I started painting in the individual shapes of the bone in clashing and contrasting colours, using neons and nudes. I plan to embroider into it tomorrow.

I used bondaweb to attach it on to my front top shape, hopefully it will sit well when the garment is made up!

Length

Up close you can see the detail and the HOURS that have gone into this, but what I wanted to do was show that its a skull from far away but then when you are up close see something different, so here are some full length shots so you can see the design!