Pre-Collection China Blue Indigo

The idea of pre-collection is to try and test out ideas and challenges I may be faced with during the final major project and some of the issues I did come across involved editing and refining my samples to get the best out of my collection and not repeating myself.

Collection of my printed tassels and prints

Dyed tassels and foiling

 I used several several techniques through my entirely digitally printed textiles collection and was faced with a few problems and it made me realise that if I had just started those in my FMP it could have affected the final outcome too. Some of these include:

• Working with digital printers and how to format files for printing.
• The silver Poly Dimont fabric looks great, however it gathers when being overlocked and stitched.
• Pleating works with Polyester as Ciment mentioned, however not all of them do. Poly light Georgette doesn't pleat well and the pleats all fell out. Certain pleats couldn't be done on thicker fabrics and many of their machines only take a max of 120 width fabric, so mine had to be cut and this wasted the fabric.
• After making lots of tassels my next challenge was putting them together and making different versions of tassels (flattened, turning them into fringe, making big and small ones).
• Editing and rejecting samples so the best ones are put forward.
• This leads onto headers and trying to put fabrics together on a header, with what looks good.
• Construction was still used, even though the whole collection was digital. It was used to make mock-up cutaway pockets, gathers and panels of prints with how they would look from my designs.

Overall I am pleased with the collection and the outcome I have produced, which was the most experimental I have ever been and it certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone at times, which I believe was important in developing myself as a designer.
I am hoping to put myself forward for TexPrint to showcase these samples to industry as well as hopefully being selected to exhibit my work for the Paul Smith award.