Mannequin

With my birthday money I have bought a mannequin and she has finally arrived.
I've named her Phyllis.

Project 1 Final Samples

Project 1 Two Collections

Project 1 Sample Development

I worked very closely alongside my sketchbook imagery to try to capture the qualities within my samples.

Third Year Project 1

Leading up to the Christmas holiday we had 8 weeks to write are own project brief and create a collection of work appropriate to a design competition running within the course.

I wrote my brief to give me the opportunity to learn new technical skills within resin and the laser cutter and to encourage me to experiment further with my sampling and fabric manipulation.

I took inspiration for colour and texture from natural forms and floral imagery to go along side the technical processes i want to explore.
Layering, enclosing, revealing and encapsulating were key words within my brief.

Sketchbook Images

Apples and Pears and Craft Wares

Me and some friends had a stall on the Apple and Pears and Crafty Wares Market on the 27th of November. It was such a cold snowy day but there was a really good atmosphere throughout the stalls with craft and handmade everywhere. I made some button hair grips to sell on the stall and sold 5 in total, I was really pleased as is was the first craft stall I had ever done and was just really glad to have sold anything at all.

Laser Cutting

This term I have been working a lot with the laser cutter and its soft wear to get a greater understanding of how it works and the complexity of its cut work; as a lot of my previous design work involves drawing loosely with a scalpel to create varied depths and layers through imagery and stencils. I wanted to experiment with the laser cutter to take my design work to the next level by experimenting with scale and use of different fabrics.

Resin Experiments

This term I wanted to experiment with resin within my work and get to understand its different properties possibilities.

Pattern Cutting Course

This year I really wanted to take every opportunity to learn as many new skills as possible. I was introduced to pattern cutting briefly over the summer and wanted to learn more about garment shapes and the make up of pattens, to give me a greater understanding of the human body.

I signed up for a six week pattern cutting evening course at New College Nottingham. I really enjoyed the course and learnt how to make a basic pattern block for a skirt, create patterns from it with seam allowance and labelled pattern cutting terms as well as dart manipulation and creating pleats within patterns. In the last session we also got the opportunity to work with a bodis block pattern and see how the two blocks could be altered to create a dress form.

Sold Swatches

Two of the swatches that i made during my time at Cast Creations have been sold.

One to an American company called 'My American Girl'

And the second to .......

Kula Tsurdiu Exhibition

During my time with Kula Tsurdiu


I helped to set up and photograph some of the initially collected objects to put on the postcard advertising the exhibition.

Due to time constraints the exhibition has been put on hold for the time been and will hopefully happen sometime next year.

Fewkes Lace Factory Nottingham

During my work experience with Kula Tsurdiu I got the opportunity to go with her to Fewkes lace factory and see lace being made. It was really exciting to see the different varieties of lace patterns and fabrics there. The machines themselves were so big, stretching from one side of the room to the other.


This lace book was beautiful with examples of different patterens and lace structures a sort of lace bible.

Kula Tsurdiu Work Experience

Kula Tsurdiu Lace Market Bridal Boutique

Origins 2010

The London Craft Fair

Old Spitalfields Market, London

George at ASDA Work Experience

I did a one week work placement during July at the George headquarters in Lutterworth, working in the ladies formal wear department.

I did alot of research based work during the week and worked with the key trend mood boards for the upcoming collections.

Cast Creations Work Experience

During my time at Cast Creations I was working on the trends for the up coming season, creating inspirational pieces through fabric manipulation machine and hand embroidery. Working directly on pre-existing garments and altering there form as well as being introduced to bits of pattern cutting to create my own garment shapes.

I really enjoyed working witin a studio space and I learnt alot about placement on the body and composition. The experience has increased my confidence in my own ability by encouraging me to take a step back from my designs an not over think them; by learning from mistakes and experiments. The swatches i created have been exhibited at trade fairs in New York, LA, Paris and London and have become part of the Cast Creation collection of swatches.

New Designers 2010

Bussiness Design Centre (Isslington) London

Making a Dress From a Pattern; Birthday Present

For my 21st Birthday my friends mum who used to make a lot of her own clothes took me to John Lewis for a day out to choose a dress pattern and some exciting fabric to help me make my own dress from start to finish. I had never made anything from a pattern before but was really excited to have a go, I learnt so much about the different stages of the make up of the garment and about the hem and interfacing that were all very new to me. It was such a lovely birthday present and something that will stay with me.

Water Project - ComON Textprint Competition

For this project i began by drawing directly from moving water and photographing it. The image below was particularly important to the project - the flowing water of the over spill of a canal



The project was a self written brief, the Key words I chose to work towards within this project were; Transparent, Fluidity, Ripples and Vigorous. The main aims within the project was to capture the movement of the water through experimental mark making and layering up of materials to capture the different aspects of the waters qualities. This encouraged me to use a lot of transparent papers acetates and cut work within my design development. To capture the movement of the water and create strong line qualities I experimented with marbling and placing inks and paints in water to transfer on to different papers.

Cast Creations Project

Cast Creations a Knitwear studio in Nottingham's Lace Market set a group competition to produce a series of embroidered garment fronts in small teams, inspired by trend research for spring summer 2011 - Vibrant Tropical.

Our Group decided on Hidden Delirium as our title, with key words such as Distortion, Intensification, Microscopic and Energetic.

We took inspiration from distorted tropical flowers using a kaleidoscope to capture imagery thorough a camera lens.

Initial Mood board

Sketchbook Images

Final Samples

At the end of the 7 week project we presented our samples, designs and sketchbooks to Cast Creations as a group. They were really pleased with our work and offered myself and two other members of the group a 6 week work placement at their studio in the summer holiday.