MA in Textile Design - a mature student's journey

Had a really brilliant week at Uni. I spent most of the week working on my designs and attending an inspirational lecture by textile designer Laura Slater.   So far our lectures have been given by people working and living in London. So, you do start to panic that to find work it would mean a move to London (never going to happen). Laura moved back home to Wakefield, just outside of Leeds, to set up her own studio and to lecture two days a week at a local college/Uni after she finished her Masters from the Royal College of Art. Since moving back she has established herself as a freelance textile designer and has collaborated with Heals, Harvey Nicols, Le Bon Marche and the Yorkshire Sculpture Garden to name but a few. I talked the lecture through with my husband when I got home that evening and I was buzzing. It was reassuring to know that you don't have to move or take a job in London to succeed in design, phew!! Here are a few photos of some of my work this week which inc...

Spent the whole of Friday in the print room, learning how to coat a screen and fix an image onto it, then how to mix colours and then finally having a go squeezing the colour through the screen then onto fabric. My attempts weren't that great, I'd drawn my design onto acetate and the lines needed to be darker/thicker or ideally printed onto the acetate from a printer. Oh well, you live and learn. On Saturday I spent most of the day sewing, for the past few months I've been selling items on Etsy, well two items so far, but you have to start somewhere. I make Star Wars side tie knickers and as we creep towards Christmas I'm hoping I can sell some more. So I made 4 pairs of various sizes and I ordered some more fabric for when I make some more this week. This week at University I have a tutorial in a few hours to discuss my presentation on a theme of our choosing which should last between 10-15 minutes. I think I am going to do mine on trend prediction I...

Trip to London Yesterday I took myself off to London to visit Print Design Fair/Tex Fusion at the Business Design Centre. It was one floor of fabric producers from around the world split with Textile Designers on the other side. It was interesting to see what designs are currently being sold and how there were some fabrics there that I thought would not be suitable for a UK market, but that could just be a question of my own taste. In hindsight, I should have taken the opportunity to speak to some agencies, like Delyth Gadd, that I saw there, but I'm not that confident in my abilities yet and I had nothing to show them anyway. What it does give me though is an idea what to expect when I go there again.  After that I went to the V&A, had lunch (salmon wrap, very nice) then went to the Undressed exhibition on underwear. The detail in the work and the corsets - ouch, plus a video of Carine Wilson's workshop in France. If you have to ask the price - you can't affo...

SeaLife Centre - Birmingham I took myself off the to Sealife Centre in Birmingham today to get some inspiration for my Camo mood boards. Not much to say, so here's some pictures - because a picture tells a million stories and I now want a jelly fish as a pet. This has given me some great ideas for some embroidery and print around this theme.

Mood Boards I've done three, which I hope will show my tutors where my thought processes are taking me. It also helps me to rationalise what I am doing and to keep as a reminder of the track I should stay (roughly) on. They aren't finished totally yet, more of a work in progress. I want to add some of my own designs and possibly some fabric choices too. The first one is Slow Futures and Camo. I've used the colour palette from WGSN , sourced pictures from online of different camouflage and used Kanye West designs to show the kind of look I am going for with regards to athleticwear. This one is inspired by the Youth Tonic colour palette and the Far East Design. The athleticwear is by Fenty Puma by Rhianna , which featured some embroidered detail with a Far East design. And lastly, this one is Kinship colour palette and Geos/Geometrics. The athleticwear is Versace , Joseph and Chromat . I'm also thinking about adding some glow in the da...

A wacky and wonderful talk from Twinks Burnett on Thursday. Twinks is a fashion stylist and festival headwear designer. She was very enthusiastic about her work and expressed that throughout her talk. Here are some of her gems from the talk: Don't think anyone else will do anything for you, they won't Check your emails, were they sent, were they read Friendly stalk people, follow up emails, follow on instagram, pester for a job Get a contract written up! Don't be impetuous, take your time Keep your head down and learn, you can watch Netflix anytime Be proactive and get things done Learn accounts, business, tax, marketing etc And most importantly and one that is very relevant to me at the moment - Make friends at Uni with loads of people from all different disciplines - keep making contacts I've also been working on my mood boards and I've spent time in the ceramics department and we finally got some training on the embroidery machines. More pics...

We had an inspirational talk from  Shahzad Mohayudin this week. He runs his own fashion label called the MATH collective. He had an unusual route into fashion design, coming from a graphic design background, selling t-shirts on a market stall, then getting picked up by Topman. After that he designed a luxury sports label with the footballer  Djbril Cisse called Mr. Lenoir/MAVRO.  It was interesting to see how he took the usual sports wear of a sweatshirt or shorts and added his own twist onto it, adding zips and detachable scarves. It certainly made me think about how we as designers have to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. Other gems of info I picked up include: Be original Make sure what you are designing is funtional, make a toile and wear it Portfolios need to change - be up for change Look for themes in your work - is there a coherence There need to be 6 points of difference between your work and someone else's to protect their and your intelle...

I've decided I'm going to blog more often, two reasons, one being that if I write too much people won't read it (not sure if anyone is anyway but hey ho) and secondly if I am to use this blog as my diary for the MA then its easier for me to pinpoint exact details rather than having too much info on one page. So over the weekend I played with geometrics. I am still finding it hard to rationalise that what I am doing is work, because sometimes it feels like play! According to WGSN and Premiere Vision geos are going to be big in 2018 and the trend of athleticwear is going to continue, so with that in mind and with my Pilates instructor hat on, that's what I am going to try and do for my first portfolio. I think, at the minute it is anyway, but things may change! We also went to Westonbirt Arboretum on Sunday, it was a glorious sunny autumnal day, so we joined the hordes and went for a walk. The trees are just turning so we might have been a bit presumptive going...

Third week at Uni done. This week has been about lectures, seminars, sketchbook work and presentations. As a mature student, that has come out of a work environment to attend Uni, I want to continue my work ethic and not get into any bad habits like just turning up to lectures and seminars. So this week, I've been in by 9.30-10 (I know, not early early, but I have home commitments and trains to catch). On Monday I began to research what WGSN think the key trends in fashion and textiles will be for Spring Summer 2018. Mixed with this I began to look back at printed textiles from the UK and US from the 17th and 18th Century. I picked the book because of the front cover, no other reason. In the afternoon we had a lecture by course director Colin Gale regarding The Future of Clothing which covered technology embedded in clothes, amended supply chains, 3D footwear, sustainability and fashion vs clothes.  Then we were set a task of presenting what we think will be the next big thin...

Second week of University and I'm starting to get my bearings and starting to think about what my first project will be. The year is split up into three 14 week blocks with a weeks holiday between each block. The first will take us up to Christmas, then January to Easter and then after that all the way to mid August and hopefully an MA at the end of it all. This week has been a mix of lectures, seminars and tours of the facilities. We've had to write our Programme of Study (or statement of purpose) a brief outline of our aims and objectives for the MA, these can be changed as I progress through the course but it helps to get something down on paper. We briefly discussed our statements and showcased some of our work either by showing portfolios, photos, Instagram feeds, anything we had really that could be passed around to the rest of the group. It took a while to get round the group but its very daunting to showcase work in front of strangers and for the overseas students,...