Drawing and Design

Drawing is incredibly important during design. What you draw has to come from your head, to the page, and onto fabric. Now meanwhile you don't have to be Picasso it helps an incredible amount if you can draw what you are thinking to a degree that if you went back to it in a week you'd know what it was and be able to adapt and improve it.

Just buy a book and fill it with whatever you can! Try out different styles of techniques, fabrics etc. This will all help your design evolve and help inspire you. Take as many pictures as you can, of people, or nature, anything that inspires you whether it be the texture,colour, sound,movement of something. A bit in this book, if your stuck for idea's, just google something and see if you can't find a picture to inspire you.

Here's a video of my book that I took to my interviews that I made myself, it's not quite as full as that since it was done in a rush but it shows a little bit of an example and implementation, sorry about the quality I didn't realise how shakey my hand was!
Here is also a ThreadBanger video, that they have on drawing which might help, it certainly helped me when I was doing my portfolio. They interviewed someone who designs for simplicity.com, which makes simplicity patterns.

I also got this book which has loads of great examples and I now draw from whenever I do a drawing! It has lots of techniques, helpful hints etc. It's written by Patrick John Ireland in case anyone wants to find it on Amazon. It's very clear and definitely helpful. 

But yeah anyway, just draw as much as you can, copy out pictures, take pictures for inspiration etc. any improvement you can make to your drawing will help! You can design however you want be it on computer, or by hand, or a little bit abstract as long as you know what it is then it's fine!
Hope this helped! xoxo

Review ... Winifred Aldrich

Winifred Aldrich has written many books. Mostly on metric pattern cutting, I've used these books at my night course and they are amazing! 5/5! Lots of stars! etc! Her books tell you about the fabrics to use, some tips etc. They are so basic and tell you how to make the pattern step-by step to your own measurements, and she tells you how to take the measurements as well since it's not quite how it appears. I've made all of my items so far from her patterns and they've all come out so well and they fit properly! What is also good about her patterns is that say your making a jacket, it will give you several options for a collar. Each option will have a picture and a complete instruction, there is nothing fussy about these books. If you seriously want to design I am telling you to invest! They are roughly £30.00, well just under like £27? but they are so worth it! They've 100's of things in them and the knowledge that they hold within those pages are worth every penny!
The pictures in them are well designed and are designed to inspire, the options are endless and she recommends fabrics to use! This saves beginners lots of time since they can go into a shop knowing what is good and what is not!

The books are designed to teach you basic pattern cutting skills. The book is recommended by professionals who still use it, by teachers and by people on Amazon who have never cut a pattern before in there life, or so they claim. The language has been kept simple and easy to understand.

As I said before I give this book 5/5 and completely recommend it. It's been printing since 1985 for a reason!
The best place to look for these books is Amazon.

Review.... One Piece of Fabric by Lena Santana

This book is written by Lena Santana, and it's purpose is to teach you how to make 15 items, with relative ease even if your a beginner. It also shows techniques in it to help you build the pieces, and the patterns are in the book as well as the instructions with step-by step pictures.

This was given to me for Christmas, and I've since tried to make the "Cute Culottes"  which are shown to the right, since I've not made shorts before and the ones in the book looked so nice. Now this may have been one of the harder projects I fear. However it was completely the opposite of what Lena desired, I followed the pattern exactly... it forgot to mention that you need to cut 2, pieces of the fabric on the pattern page, also how wide to make the crotch wasn't mentioned, but I roughly estimated. The step-by step pictures were also very unhelpful, they've been taken so close up that you can't tell what seam is what, and the pictures are useless in that regard, they are focused and good. The instructions are fairly good and very straight forward with no real fancy language, which can often be found in this type of book and makes them un-usable. There are also not lots of steps for you to follow, this makes it a little easier to do since it means that it looks like there is less to do and can be a bit motivating.

The idea's in this book are excellent. The patterns seem easy enough to make, though I recommend a ruler,calculator and some squared paper. The pattern hasn't got numbers telling you how big the lines are for each size, but you can easily measure them and just times them by 6, which the book does tell you to do since the scale is of 6. The book caters for all sizes and the patterns are clear on the page. The pictures meanwhile being useless for the step-by step process can help you if you can identify which area they are.
The pictures in the book that are taken of the items are clear and quite inspiring as well as showing their simplicity off. The book has mostly summer wear in i.e. bikini's, shorts and simple cami tops. The instructions are clear and detailed enough that if you take your time you can easily make the product and the techniques that are in the book are well written so that beginners can follow them.
Over all this book is good, however a little knowledge or help may be needed on the pattern making part of the book although there are instructions to go with them and they do seem clearly instructed just perhaps a little common sense is needed which could be where I went wrong.

If you wish to buy it then the cheapest place I've so far found is:
Amazon - One piece of Fabric by Lena Santana

I will be using this book to make little projects from that I will post up here with twists, or just for people who don't want to buy the book or find it hard to follow.

Hope you enjoy the book if you buy it!

xoxo

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