3 green dots - shop talk

Senioritis

My husband would be the first to tell you that I have the worst case of senioritis.  I can't wait to graduate and get going doing what I truly love.  But all good things come to those who wait, so I will suck it up another quarter. 

This fall quarter had been very busy - I'd say busier than previous.  I got 5 prototypes created for the fashion show in May (which I won't show because prototypes are boring and I want it to be a surprise).  I also did a short stint as an intern for Winds of Africa as a graphic designer.  I redesigned their logo (using Photoshop and Illustrator),

   

mocked up tees with the new logo (using Photoshop and Illustrator),

designed the invitation for their fundraising events (using InDesign),

and designed a business card for Audra - founder and director of Winds (using InDesign). 

By the way, Winds of Africa is a non-profit organization based in Tanzania (and San Diego).  If ever you want to go to Africa and experience living with the locals and all that stuff, Winds can hook you up with a tour and a good hotel.

I also interned for Holly, she is a local designer and an awesome artist and expert screenprinter.  Though I didn't get my hands dirty screenprinting she gave me the creative freedom to design two messenger bags.

   

One of the classes I truly enjoyed this quarter is Surface Design-Knits.  U4ia is a fashion industry sofware I wish I can afford to buy.  It's great for designing textiles and applying weaves on a flat image.  I created a couple of knit textiles that I got to digitally print (for free!) and made a bathing suit out of.

I designed 4 fabrics in U4ia.  The top two are modified fractals I created using fractal forge which I brought over to Illustrator and Photoshop to get to the final image. Everything else after that is U4ia. The bottom two are (Photoshop) modified google images created in U4ia.

 

I designed 5 bathing suits, picked a favorite and constructed it.

 

I chose the first croquis and had the top right textile image printed on a nylon spandex.  The color is a little off...I shot this at night using my iphone...but overall I think it came out nice. Our academic director will be scrutinizing it over the break and decide if it is fashion show worthy...we'll see...

     

Can you believe that after all that I still managed to create a dress for me??? finally, I said.  Actually, it was an accident. I meant to create a dress in size 6 to sell but my process was haphazard - it turned out to be a size 2. Yayy! for me.

 

whew! I think I got my blog fix. I have 4 weeks 'til the winter quarter...

Business card

Today, I worked on creating a business card for me.  I am graduating in a few months and I need to have something to give prospective clients and, you know, just for fun. Anyway, I decided to use the design I created as a class project for Carolina Herrera while incorporating a couple of croquis I did for class as well. I came up with this. Simple yet stylish.

 

This is the front.

    This is the back.

What do you think?  Sometime within the next few months I will (I should) have my portfolio online. Ciao!

Fabric Dyeing

The week off came and gone. It was just not enough - too short. But I did manage to squeeze in a couple of days to play around with fabric dyeing.  I dyed these swatches in turquoise or Procion MX - G dye for those of you who are familiar with Procion MX dyes.

  fabric: rayon georgette

  technique: scrunched

 

  fabric: viscose challis

  technique: pleated and folded concertina style

 

 

  fabric: sandwashed cotton broadcloth

  technique: triangular folding concertina style

 

 fabric: cotton bamboo poplin

  technique: twisted

 

 

I also overdyed this piece of shantung. It was in very light mint color and here it is after being immersed in turquoise.  Voila!

 

 My goal is to dye an entire garment using one of these techniques and for the finished product not to look like a reincarnation of the 60's tie-dye style.  Ombre' was the big trend in the runways of NY, London, Milan, and Paris last year and this theme is still going strong today. 

Fin

Sorry for being m.i.a. for so long.  Things get pretty hectic towards the end of the quarter.  But I am back and that means summer quarter is over and the wedding dress project is complete.

I put a lot of work into it hence I'm attached. I will be sad to see it go. Our school usually hangs on to students works (at least the worthy ones) and showcases them during department activities and to visitng industry professionals.  Somebody told me that the dress could be showcased in our upcoming spring fashion show.  That will be nice.

Time for me to move on to another project.  I have a week off from school and I plan to experiment and learn a ton about fabric dyeing. I purchased this book called Magic Dyeing Made Easy and I can't wait to get started.

Couture musings

I owe a lot to my wedding dress muse.  I have to admit, I don't think I would have come up with this great design without her help and inspiration.  She is one of my good friends and I am forever grateful for her participation in this project.

This is the concept board I created based on her ideas.  After digesting all this and back and forth discussion I came up with this wedding dress design. The wedding dress project basically has 3 requirements: 1. It should look like a wedding dress, 2. it should have some kind of boning, 3. it should have some kind of surface design. 

The dress looks simple but really the construction of it will be very intricate and will take a long time.  I will be fulfilling requirement 2 by putting boning along the princess seams of the bodice and requirement 3 by doing crossover tucks all over and all around the skirt portion of the dress.  This is the part that will take the longest time to complete.

Among other things, our couture instructor wanted us to also get a feel for costing.  I asked my muse how much she would be willing to spend on this dress - her response, between 500-800 dollars.  So this weekend I purchased the materials (fabrics (that vary between 3.99-8.99 per yard), thread, and zipper) and it cost me about $200.  My labor and profit then falls between 300-600 dollars - which really is not very much.  Let's break that down a little bit more and only consider labor...let's assume I worked 8 hours a day and it took me 5 days to complete this dress.  A 300-dollar payment puts my hourly rate at $7.50 (!!!) while an 800-dollar payment puts my hourly rate at $20.00 (still !!!!) - and this is just labor, what about my profit?  I guess I never truly understood why and how a couture piece can cost so much.  I definitely have a renewed appreciation for couture designers and their work.

A couture dress is ultimately about beauty and craftmanship.  And in my case, it is a labor of love, dedicated to my muse. 

More than a seamstress

I want to show some of my work that are not sewing related.  Fashion design students are not only great at garment construction but are adept at hand sketching and using the programs within the ADOBE Creative Suite.  From now on, I will share more of my computer generated and hand rendered designs in addition to sewing.   

I sketched this out 2 years ago for my fashion illustration class.

This is my very first croquis set. I don't think of myself as a fine artist but I am quite fond of this piece.

This is a designer bio collage I created in Photoshop.

 

I chose Carolina Herrera because I can relate to her style and designs.  She is one of the designers I admire the most.

The CH collage project (above) was extended to a catalogue project. I teamed up with India - my fellow design student, she was working on Bally - and we collaborated on creating this catalogue (shown here is the cover -back, front and one inside page). 

This book contained 12 pages and it's pretty much a fashion catalogue. We based the fashion layout from Anthropologie's catalogue - we are big fans of Anthropologie.

This is edited in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

 

 

 

 

I finally finished the avant garde project.  I like the dress but I don't think it is avant garde enough.  I had my friend model it and it looked awesome on her (I will post a photo later). It's definitely wearable but this is exactly why I am bit disappointed.  I had fun making the dress though and I learned a lot from it. I think I will use the same pocket technique in another project.

Claim to Fame

Last quarter as a final project, I made a dress for my Advance Draping class.  It was inspired by the Shakespeare Festival going on during that time and since I was working behind the scenes over at the Old Globe Theatre Costume Department I got to see some awesome techniques which are tucked away in my head for future use.

The ruching on this dress and the silver color is reminiscent of the old.  I particularly like the charcoal color of the cotton bamboo fabric.  I was still working on the dress when this photo was taken and as I got closer to finishing it came to me that it will suit Natalie Portman. I really think she will like this dress and wear it. So I called it the Natalie Portman dress.

The finished product made it in our local TV.  Yesterday, the Art Institute was featured in the early morning news and Sheena Gao, our program director and Laura Krusemark, one of our wonderful fashion design instructors, talked about the program and showcased our designs.  Here's the link if you want to check it out.  My dress comes out at about 2:40 in.  Enjoy!

http://www.sandiego6.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?articleID=491656

Very first avant garde dress

This is my very first attempt to make an avant garde dress. It has a fairly simple silhouette and style lines but the pockets were a bit tricky to create. This is the sample which is made out of muslin and color blocked with blue cotton fabric. 

The actual piece will have color blocking but I am torn on exactly what fabrics to use.  I originally presented this concept in class using nylon organza and polyester dutchess fabrics. But I found other fabrics made of cotton that might work better.

I'll figure it out.  I hope you find this piece delightful.  To be continued...

An evening of creativity

Now that midterms are over I finally have time to make something beautiful.  I bought Amy Karol's book (Bend-the-rules sewing) after reading it from another blog. It is an awesome book. After reading the first couple of pages one of the new things I learned is how to store fabrics properly.  All this time I thought it would be okay to put them in boxes for storage. I was wrong. So I took my fabrics out of misery and let them breathe.

They are all still on the floor breathing.  This weekend I am going to find them a new home on the shelf.  Seeing my fabrics again was great because then I got a chance to pick out a couple of pieces I can use to make Amy Karol's wonderful purse. 

The pattern is very simple and the instructions in the book are easy to follow. I cut out the fabric last night and acquired some facing today.  I sewed up the entire purse in less than 2 hours. It was great and now I am so excited that I have a new purse.  I am going to make a couple more - with slight variations and put it up in my shop. 

Check out my new purse: 

1st time for everything...

I've never blogged before - not until today.  It crossed my mind many times in the past but somehow I just never had something worthwhile to talk about until I started tapping into my creative side.  I started fashion school almost a year ago and I love every minute of it.  I think I finally found my true calling. This summer (in the midst of making my wedding dress) I made clothes for my 8-month old niece - a 70's jumper, a pair of everyday pants, and a pair of going out pants which she won't get to where until she's about 2.  All these inspired me to make more things and to find a way to sell them.  I came across etsy and this website opened the door for an opportunity to sell and market my creations.

So today, I set up an online shop.  I am so excited. It is still under construction but I can't wait for tomorrow because that means I can get started on making clothing that I will be putting up for sale.  I have tons of fabric waiting to be created into cool outfits.  I have photos to share of the clothes I made for my niece, I'll post them soon.