I made it with my hands

This is my new favourite Rob Ryan screen print. I love the sentiment, I'm sure it will ring true with a lot of creative people too. You can buy it here.

Walcott Vintage Market, Bath

Such a subtle print created with such an intricate design.

love the cross hatched texture created in these two prints 

beautiful chinoiserie style embroidery used in this shawl 

adore the brush stroke painterly effect created in this stripe print.

Crabbing on Mersea Island

New Designers 2012

My trip to New Designers 2012 was, if I'm honest, a bit overwhelming. Although I have been once before (to see my sister's stand a few years back) I didn't really go round the whole thing properly. when I arrived I went round the whole thing once quite quickly and then I sort of tried to go back over it and make a note of some of the graduates work that appealed to me. I didn't take any photos because I wasn't sure if your are allowed to, and I kind of expected them all to have blogs or websites showcasing their work. But that turned out to be a mistake, as surprisingly some of them didn't.


Hannah Simpson - Knitted Textiles @ Buckingham & Chilterns University

Samantha Gardiner - Textile Design @ Somerset College

Kirsty Ridge - Textile Design @ Arts University College at Bournemouth

Anna Piper - Woven Textiles @ Nottingham Trent University

Kayleigh Daft - Textile Design @ University of Derby

Andrea da Costa - Knitted Textiles @ Central St Martins College of Art & Design

Hannah Ffion Alderman - Textile Design @ Central St Martins College of Art & Design

Eleanor Kingdon - Textile Design @ University College Falmouth

Emma Louise Castle - Textile Design @ University College Falmouth

Jennifer Hollidge - Textile Design @ University College Falmouth

Anyway, I've done some detective work and have managed to find at least some link to them. Next time I will be more prepared, and perhaps a bit braver come 2013.

One thing I did take away with me was the amount of competition for jobs, and it has driven home in me the importance of me not going down my usual route of being a 'jack-of-all-trades and a master of none'. It is true that having a understanding of all the different processes that are encompassed in fashion and textiles is important, as it makes you flexible in the workplace, but at the same time I think it is clearly important to be really good in a specialised area and not just mediocre in everything. 

Final Outcome finished - Apron dress

The Sun popped it's hat on briefly this morning, so I hot footed it up to my allotment to take some photos of my finished apron dress...

Patching up

To cover the smudged bee and butterfly that I mentioned earlier, I cut another bee and butterfly from one of my trial screen prints. I then used steam a seam 2 to fuse them to the dress over the smudges and free machine embroidered the outer edges.

It's not perfect but it looks better than it did!

Mounting up boards

Just finished mounting up my supporting boards for my apron dress.

They include my research map

my sample board

and my fashion illustrations

You might have noticed that the sample board is missing a sample on the right hand side compared with the planned layout. When I came to mount up the board and was measuring up where to put every accurately, I felt that the board would look to crowded, so I made an excutive decision and left the bottom one out.

Tutorial and finalising garment and boards

The last two weeks before hand in the studios are being packed away in preparation for the degree show. So I will be working from home for the next couple of weeks, but yesterday I popped in for a tutorial with Charlie, to finalise the layout for my sample and illustration boards, and to discuss any last decisions with regards to my final outcome.

We selected some vintage buttons from my collection that were in my colour palette and pinned them to the straps to decide on the layout. We also decided to use a Woman's Land Army logo that I cleaned up on photoshop on the ends of the straps. I made these 'badges' using dylon image transfer paste onto calico.

But when I came to sew the buttons on each strap at home, I felt that five on each strap and the WLA logos would look to crowded, so I opted for three buttons on each strap with space for the logo instead.

Painting with dyes

Today I finally got round to painting my sample screen prints with my procion dyes.

I'm really pleased with how the colours have turned out so I'm definitely going to use the same process on my final garment. I will just have to be very careful not to drip any dye by accident whilst I am painting the real thing!

Machine embroidery

Originally, as well as using free machine embroidery for my seedlings, I was going to go over some of the print with machine embroidery as I had done in my first samples.

But when I tried this on the screen printed samples, because I had reduced the size of the embroidery transfers to make the print, I found it difficult to use the machine embroidery on such a small motif. Therefore I have decided to keep the free machine embroidery limited to the seedlings and a small butterfly on the back of the left hand shoulder.