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.