Design principles

Design principles: line, texture, repetition, graduation, radiation, contrast, harmony, balance, proportation

Silhouettes: stright column, hourglass, trapeze, egg shape, shoulder wedge, natural

oxo

Design Development

Here are a couple of pictures of the design development I have been doing over the last couple of weeks for my final garment 

oxo

CAD- 3

THE SKIRT

My first attempt

My second attempt- here I upped my scale and made them larger as I need to work on the scale of my drawings!

When we are using Illustrator we use a book by Kevin Tallon called Creative Fashion Design With Illustrator which is really helpful and gives you a step by step guide on how to make different things!I need to get my hands on my own copy

oxo

CAD- 2

THE VEST

My basic vest drawing

My vest with added details- seam lines

At the bottom of the vest you can see where I haven't pressed shift to draw a straight line when constructing it, this should be straight all the way across.

My second attempt

When creating these drawings I need to work on getting the shape right and getting it into proportion! And not designing them for rugby players

oxo

CAD- 1

CAD= COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN

For our CAD lessons we use the programme Adobe Illustrtor CS6

which is pretty easy to use once you know the basics and get the hang of pressing lots of cmd and shift all the time! In out first lesson this is what we created, its a colour card with all different prime colours. These would be useful when doing a colour chart for a collection or garment and could be used on a mood board or on a CAD drawing. There just like what you find in B&Q!

oxo

Pattern cutting- 8

The fabric I have chose to the make the Giles Deacon dress is a purple taffeta, Its really pretty in different lights as sometimes it looks purple, pink or even blue! I think it will be great for the photo shoot.

First of all I laid out the pattern pieces on the fabric 

Because the good sides and bad sides of the fabric weren't obvious I have to make the wrong side visible with tailors chalk 

Adding in the dart. There is a really small tricky one which is above the seam allowance at the bottom of the pattern peice and you cant go over the edge which really took some patience to do

Over locking of the two sides  

Then attaching the two sides with a 1cm seam allowance

We then had to carry out the task of adding in the bodice panels, which really confused me at times and I really had to concentrate and think about! Once I have done this task I few times Im sure it will come to me a lot more naturaly 

Over locking all the raw edges after the bodice was complete

Once the garment was constructed up to this stage it needed to e pressed on the iron making sure all the edges were pressed in the right places

oxo

Georgia Hardinge

 I truly cant fault this woman's work, everything I have seen by her has caught my eye! Her work has a tie dye look to it and some reminds me origami as well as its very structured so it has a mix to it. All kinds or people love her designs including some famous faces like Beyonce, Florence Walsh and Alicia Keys. She hasn't just worked independently she has collaborated with a number of top brands! I just don't know why I haven't noticed her before now.

Georgia Harding A/W collections

Georgia Harding S/S collections

Collaborations  

Britain's next top model

Her illustrations were used on a limited audition Lancome bottle for the Diamond Jubilee

Victoria Secrets sponsored by Swarovski 

Up and coming..

River Island on a S/S13 collection, a short film will be featured during fashion week to launch this collection. I will certainly be keeping my eyes well peeled for this!

oxo

p.s I would love one of her scarfs!!!

Fendi S/S 2013

London Fashion Week is quickly coming around and S/S 13 shows have already started! Up to now Frendi's collection is my favourite with its pops of colour on neutrals really takes my fancy.

oxo

Fashion Design cycle

That image doesn't look very eye catching at all- boring

Since being given the task of researching about the design cycle I knew I had read about it before could remember where and I was determined that I couldn't mix it up with the product design cycle which I already know all about. The last few weeks I have been searching for this one book at home and tonight I have found it!! (sigh of relief haha) And over all of the internet I couldn't find it in a clearer way (not only the diagram) which has proved to me that the cycle is almost like a hamster wheel haha. (A quote from the book not me!) 

The book I got it from is called Fashion Design and its by Sue Jenkyn Jones. Im made up I found it as its got everything in such as pattern cutting, the history of fashion, all about fashion capitals, marketing- basically a little bible. Im actually surprised how many book I have on fashion, could start my own library but there just so handy and helpful to have.

oxo

Pattern cutting- 2

So carrying on from last week (see in this post) we were continuing to pattern for our 60s inspired dress. I had finished patterning the basics and was onto the features.

Pleats in my skirt

1. This is where I was up to from last week, which meant I needed to finish off the 3rd pleat and do a final pattern for the front of the skirt and start the back pattern.

 2. The finished pleats. To create the pleats you have to draw out the skirt pattern with your pleats drawn in, cut down the line of the first pleat, leave a 1.5cm gap and draw a line. Then fold over the pleat onto the line you have drawn and do that 3 times. 

3. Once the pleats were complete we needed to draw out the final pattern pieces which meant we needed to iron out the pleats so that the paper is flat, by doing this it allows you to get the right measurements. To get the final pattern we had to trace around the pattern piece then add a 1cm seam allowance.

4. When drawing out the pleats we needed to make sure we didn't draw every line, to make sure I never did that I labelled them with stars. But without the starts I remembered which lines we needed to draw by thinking  'just the ones we stuck down' haha.

 5. When we first started patterning I decided I would have pleats in the back of my skirt as well, that meant I had to repeat that task again to the get the same outcome for my back. This is what my final pieces look like.

Neck facing 

6. The next feature of the garment we needed to do was the neck facing, which is used to make the neckline look more slick and tidy and its also used on the back of garments. To pattern for one of these it's really simple all you need to do is draw a curved line 5cm down from the neck line making sure it joins with the shoulder. 

7. It's really that simple!! then you have to trace it to get a final patter piece and add a 1cm seam allowance around both the corners and the top leaving the bottom line free of a seam allowance, then you need to go a head and add you 3 lines of information- we did this by adding our names, what the pattern piece was called and how many times we needed it cutting out. We also needed to makes sure we had added a grain line and to make sure if we needed C.F line we put one in. 

Sleeve

8. The last feature we needed to pattern was of course the sleeve. To do this it meant we needed to draw around a sleeve block. To start with we needed to check if the sleeve would fit our pattern, once we had drawn around the outline of the block then we needed to draw in the underarm line (the 1st line) and then the elbow line (3rd line) making sure we had traced in the notches. Next came choosing how long we wanted the sleeve to be, I decided I didn't want my sleeve to be a little cap sleeve I wanted it to be a little bit longer so I draw my line at 8cm from the underarm line. To get a final pattern for this we had to trace the shape of the sleeve to the line we had drawn (mine being the 2nd line) then adding a 1cm seam allowance all the way around and putting the correct information on to it. And voilà, my first dress pattern!!!!! Now for the cutting..


Cutting the pattern

When choosing my fabric I had in mind using a pattern for some of the features of my dress for two reasons 1 being, I want them to stand out and 2 being, I don't want to be boring haha. So with these thoughts in the back of my head when I seen this tartan I couldn't leave it behind as recently I have a love for everything tartan. Literally everything I own seams to have the pattern on from my trousers to my shoes to my scarf (don't worry I don't clash them all together).

9. Here is one of my neck facing pattern pieces pinned to the fabric I am using. When cutting out a patterned piece you need to make sure the peiece is pinned down in the right place making sure it is properly flat, also you need to look out for the information wrote down on the piece and follow the instructions. A big thing also is to save fabric!!! It isn't CHEAP. SO by placing the pattern pieces on to the fabric in a way so it saves helps a lot in industry as it brings the manufacturing price down. 

  
10. After I had cut C.F neck facing out from pattern piece, I placed my other pieces on in a way that has left me with at least half of my fabric left! Which makes it worth while as I can now go onto use it for something else.

I got up to the point of pinning down the final dress pieces so after the christmas holidays I will continues to cutting out the pieces and start manufacturing (exciting!!)

oxo