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!

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 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!