Textile Design Workshop at the London College of Fashion 29th July-2nd August 2013

So I've been thinking about creating a blog for a long time, but I didn't really know where to start or what my first entry should be? With my ever growing thoughts of wanting to do textile design and creating my own scarf line, I took myself off to London College of Fashion to take a course in textile design....with this in mind I thought an account of my time with some pictures of my work, what better way to getting my blog kicked off!

Day One

I travelled to London to take part in the course and as I'm not a local travelling to Limegrove was a bit of a novelty, I managed to arrive on my first day at 9.25 for a 10.00am course! Oh well it's good to be early and have a sometime to prepare myself. At 10.00am we met our tutor Dominique L'Olive, who would fast become our oracle of all things textile (even referring to Dominique as Mr Miyagi).

Our first task was using the heat transfer press, we sketched some ideas as well as using various items from a magic box of tricks that was full of different items such as cotton reels, lace and different trim. I found an amazing piece of lace that I kept the whole week to use in my designs.The idea is the heat from the press will transfer the ink designs to the fabric pressed underneath. I tried and tested lots of different ideas, getting lots of funky results. I also Found out that should I want to do this from home all I would need is a dry iron.

Day Two

Day two was all about the stencilling and open screen printing, we started by designing basic stencils that would need to be cut out with a scalpel and cutting board. I'll be honest at first I found it really difficult cutting out the shapes, I kept tearing the paper, as it was so thin! Using the scalpel just didn't come naturally to me; I guess it is probably something to do with fact I hold my fork and knife the wrong way around!! This was the day, I decided I wanted to stencil a candy skull, with all the day of the dead trimmings. My only problem with this design was I just couldn't get the idea in my head and how I was going to stencil the layers! I gave up on this idea for the day, deciding on something a bit easier.

Day Three

We did more stenciling and printing using the screens, this time I started printing on my t-shirt. I obviously needed the night to think over my day of the dead skull because I came into college as fresh as a daisy knowing exactly what I needed to do. I also used this time to finish some of my designs and added more layers. As well as printing we had a go at wax painting and dying the fabric. I didn't find this as interesting as the other methods we tried.

Day four

After my test candy skull it was time to have a go printing my t-shirt, On day three I also took the opportunity to visit poundland where I found all sorts of goodies that could be used to print onto the material and create really cool effects. My classmates had also brought in lots of fun bits and pieces that would be interesting on the heat press. Today as well as finishing some pieces we learnt about shibori, the art of sewing shapes into the fabric to create resist prints. We also learnt about pleating fabric as well as painting a block of colour on paper and using lacy fabric and other items to create resists.  I managed to create a skull shaped stencil on previous days and kept to this theme throughout my designs. The lovely Melissa one of my classmates brought in this super cool spider lace, which worked amazingly on my skull design. I also found a really cool method of peeling the Velcro from rollers and using the inside to make a cool print pattern. As you can see I also got a bit too obsessed with the violet ink. 

Day Five

The last day at the London College of Fashion! It had gone by so fast I had lots of ideas and Dominique had given me lots to think about in terms of starting up my label.  I had promised myself that once the course was over I would really get things in order and start being serious about doing my textile design. Today we were introduced to a really quirky method called foiling, which for someone like me with a penchant for bright colours it really appealed to!  We also had the chance to use some templates with our material, which really gave us the chance to put our designs in context.

I had a great time studying textile design and trying different methods and as I said before I came away with lots to think about and hopefully I can make success at this.  I met lots of lovely people who I hope to stay in contact with and exchange tips and advice with in the future.

Thanks for reading, how was that for a first post? I would be interested to hear from anyone that happens to stumble upon this blog and gives it a whirl.