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

Also would you like more reviews of books?

How to stretch T-Shirts

I know this post seems a kind of an odd one, but the possibilities are endless. You can stretch a shirt you love but has shrunk thanks to the enemy dryer and washer (Really must remember to get them back on side at some point!) or whether it be because you want to design on a large shirt, sometimes the shirt simply looks like you've brought a shirt that doesn't fit. Stretching really can be very useful, beware however of T-shirts that have a design on already, you may just stretch the design if you aren't careful!

So Attempt 1#:
Simply try pulling the shirt to stretch it, you can pull it in any direction just not diagonally, so just horizontal or vertical. You may need to tug at it a couple of times, but this is good for shirts that don't need all that much extra stretch.

Attempt 2#:
Wet the t-shirt thoroughly with water and then lay it somewhere (on a flat surface) and just again pull and then hang to dry. Remember to put a towel on the floor, so that it doesn't get wet since obviously the water will need to go somewhere. Alternatively once hung you can carry on stretching and dry it with a hair dryer.

Attempt 3#:
I've read in other places that you should do this while the shirt is wet, however to be honest I don't know how good that is for you're iron so it's up to you whether the shirt is dry or not. But put the Iron on a low to medium heat and then just pull the shirt while your ironing, and use the iron to keep pushing the fabric to stretch it.

Attempt 4#:
You can get someone else to wear the shirt of course as well... not sure how that would stretch the shirt though so not really advising that one for now!

Hope this helped, as always leave comments if you have any questions, or if you did anything really cool with your stretched t-shirts! also which attempt worked well for you?

Turning a simple dress into a Playsuit/RomperSuit

I love play suits, however I just don't look good in them. I recently got my lovely boyfriend to buy  a bundle of dresses off Ebay, and this one came in the bundle, I'm not much of a floral person, but I love play suits and thought it would make quite a cute play suit just for messing about in the garden and such in, so here is a tutorial. Please try on the dress first to see how it fits, I skipped this part and it doesn't fit unless I loose some more weight, so for now it's tucked in the back of my closet.


How to:

1)   1)   Find a simple dress and press (iron) it so that there are no creases, don’t worry if like me you’re useless with an iron, this step isn’t necessary but it just helps when drawing since creases are hard to draw over.

2)   2)   Now find a pair of shorts or jeans, ideally boot cut, since I’m not sure how it would work with skinny jeans etc, but boot cut are just a lot more rectangular and less fiddly I should imagine.

3)     3) Fold the dress and the jeans/shorts in half. Make sure to fold the dress wrong sides together so that your pattern is inside, not facing up at you.

4)     4) Place the halves on  top of each other as so. I would advise if the dress is like the one I am using that you make the crutch about an inch or so lower, since mine turned out to have REALLY long legs.

5)      5) I advise before just cutting, that you pin and then try on, I didn’t do this, and forgot the size of my bum… it doesn’t fit properly, therefore trying it on before does help, that way you can adjust the pins and such and make sure you can pull it up properly….. however if this is on a dress that you will never like and is simple a run through to see how to do it so that you can then do it on a dress you do like… then I suppose you can skip the whole adjusting thing just so that you get the idea.

6)   6)   Now you can try to simply just cut round the jeans or if you’re a bit like me, you can draw then cut, anything will work really.

7)      7) Then simply unfold and pin them and then sew and they should look brilliant (: I used a ½ hem allowance since I could tell before I started that they were going to be small in the leg, however I would advise 5/8 instead. I just used a straight stitch. Do try your machine on a sample piece (the bit you chopped out for the crutch will do) and just make sure your machine is set up okay.

If you have any questions feel free to just leave it in a comment and I'll check the posts regularly, hope your play suits come out a bit better than mine did,but the main instructions are here!

zxoxo

8)       

Becoming a designer...

I want to become a designer. In case you've not guessed. But I found it really hard to find much information on How to do this, so hopefully people who read this will help, and people who want help will find the help they need.

I do 6th form and do History,Art and Business Studies, I also did Photography as an AS. My world pretty much revolves around fashion, I shop, I read, I look,Watch, pretty much breathe it. I just can't help it, it's true, Fashion  really can change the world. Would you vote for someone that looked grubby and unkept? Nope, so no presidents do. You kinda see my point I hope by now. 

But I've taken up a night course at the local college - Pattern cutting and dress making. It's the basic level, but before I didn't know how to do anything. I tried to make simple bags and failed and got tired of it. It's extremely frustrating when you can't do something. So I'll post pictures and video's so as to help you or at least try. This way you're at least doing some basic sewing of pockets etc. I'll try my best for the rest! But it's also just something just to quickly refer back to if needed, which is always helpful, a little like an online book!

But for now I've not made any video's as this is the first post. So subscribe and keep updated!