Indivdual Option - Fashion fabrics

... so now im on my final assignment for this year. It has flown by but I have really enjoyed learning about each area of design. For my individual option project I have decided to do Surface design for fashion but instead of basing it on embroidery I am going to do fashion prints, mainly repeated ones.
The trend I have chosen is called jardin de Fluers. Again i have chosen a floral theme! This time I want it to be different and stand out against other floral designs I have created.
The theme I chosen is just a starting point for me I want to take it much further.
To begin with I gathered as much research as possible, because I wanted to make my theme more interesting I decided to focus on tropical hot house florals so for this project a lot of my imagery came from interesting books with photographs of unusual, not everyday florals. I also wanted to include tropical insects. 

Here are my Visual and Fashion Research Boards

  I then started drawing. I wanted to make sure that my drawing sheets were visually exciting so I used a variety of different drawing media.  Below is three of my Drawing sheets.

Once I had completed my drawing sheets I began creating layouts.

I knew from the beginging that I wanted to create both digitally printed designs as well as doing screen prints.

I decided to create a development sketchbook to log my process throughout this assignment. In it I added my digital print development and all my screen printed samples...

I decided to work on my digital prints straightaway so that I could have them digitally printed on time. To the left is a page taken from my sketchbook showing how I developed each design and how they link in with my fashion research.

Below is three pages taken from my sketchbook showing some screen printed samples...

Once I had created my digital designs and made sure they were up to scratch I sent them off to a Digital Print company, the Digital Printer in University was fully booked up. Unfortually they were unable to get my prints back to me by my deadline so I cancelled the ordered and had them printed onto paper to show how they would look at A2 scale.
As well as my digital designs I had several Final Screen printed designs.
Below are a few of my Final Designs for this project...
Digital...

Screen printed...

Surface design for gift - Hallmark

My surface design for gift was a live assignment for hallmark. One of the design team members came into uni and gave us our brief and a selection of trends to choose from. I chosen the secret garden theme.

I gathered lots of research and took many photographs.

Mood Board

Visual Board

I started off by doing a sketchbook full of visual drawings linked to my theme, below I have selected a few of my pages from my sketchbook.

 

  

 I then scanned my drawings into the computer and created a large variety of gift wraps, cards and tags. I really enjoyed messing around with colour, effects and size while working on photoshop. I created five development boards from all the different cards, tags and wrap etc. that I had made.

Here are two of my development boards... 

From my development I selected the ones I thought worked the best and recreated them for finals. I wanted my collection to be very bright and vibrant and have a variety of different contrasting colours.

Here are my three boards showing my final collection... 

Over all I think my collection works well and I enjoyed designing all the bits and bobs for gift. One thing is that I wish i'd of had a little longer to do it because I would of loved to develop them even further and made my one  big collection into lots of little more focused collections.

Surface design for fashion - preditor kitsch

My Second Project in Second year was surface design for fashion (Embroidery)
I based my work on a trend called Preditor Kitsch. Preditor Kitsch is a trend based on wild animals and different animal prints but made to look different and quirky.
For this assignment I designed to work on Vest Top shapes. I started off by collecting as much research as possible on my chosen theme then began creating drawing sheets from them. From my drawing sheets I created some designs. I then choose three of them to create as finals.

Here are my final three...

I created this first Vest design in patchwork effect. I cut out my drawings and laid them on top of each other to create this unusual layered design. I have used a variety of different techniques and fabrics while creating this design. I wanted to achieve a textured effect.


  



To create this second design I just recreated one of my drawing sheets onto fabric. This is my favourite design because I think the scale of it works well on the top shape. I feel the embroidery works well on the dyed background and the pieces of devore velvet appliqued on resemble the tigers stripes well.

I created my third design in a different way again. I wanted to create a inky background so I used manutex pull through. I created each part of this design seperately using mixtures of hand and machine embroidery and applique. I then appliqued each part on.

Final samples for Roma

Following on from my previous post.. 

From my drawing sheets I created a variety of different layouts for furnishing fabrics.
To the left is my final painted out design. I chose this design because I felt it worked best for my theme and because its such a busy design it stood out against all my other layouts.


I choose these colours because they are bright and suit my theme and stand out against the black background.

Here is my final design printed onto fabric. I created it on black heavy cotton. I found it quite difficult printing onto such a dark background at first and my colours weren't coming out as vibrant as I liked. I then decided to use pigments with Opaque binder. This worked really well so I decided this was the best way to print my Final Design.

Aswell as doing a printed sample in the same colours as my painted out design I created several other prints in different colourways,

While doing this I wanted to experiment with different dyes to see what different effects I could create. I found it very interesting seeing how my design looked on totally different fabrics with different dyes and colours.

Here are two samples from my additional colour way prints:

Second Year - Surface design for interiors -Roma

My first project in second year was surface design for interiors.

I chosen the theme 'Roma'. Roma is quite a bright theme, based on flowers, russion dolls, fairgrounds and travellers
From the reseach I gathered for this theme here are my visual drawing sheets...

 Throughout my drawing sheets I tried to use a wide variety of different media such as: Water colours, pencils, Inks, and paints. I wanted to make them visually exciting to enable me to create exciting layouts to take through into print.



First year Surface design for Fashion - Embroidery

For my first year 'surface design for fashion' project I had to create 3 Embroidered Gament shapes.
I decided to use the dress garment shape and I based my embroidery mainly on florals.
To create my Dress Designs I photo copied my drawing sheets and put together some placements. I really focused on how to place the imagery on the dress shapes so they they worked together as a collection.

Here are my 3 Final Embroidered Dress Designs...

On this first design I used imagery of 2 birds I linked them together with 2 flowers and a stem with leaves on. I used a mixture of machine and hand embroidery as well as applique. Im quite happy with the result of this design appart from the slight puckering.

On this next dress design I kept the imagery just of flowers and created a flow from the top of the dress to the bottom. I used a variety of different size and coloured flowers to give the dress a bright summery feel. I also used a varity of different embroidery techniques to make the dress look more textured instead of being flat.

 

On the 3rd Dress design again I used just floral imagery. I focused the detail on the bottom right hand corner of the dress and made it flow towards the middle. Once again i used a variety of different embroidery techniques and appliqued pieces of dyed fabric on.

 
 Overal I am happy with my dress designs and think they work well as a collection. Obviously These designs are for University work purposes only because I would not be able to sell designs seperately with the same images used on them.