Design, Production and Application

Designing for a specific purpose and application is considered one of the textile industry's primary focus. Maybe it is because of my love for technicality but the concept and manner of putting a design into production whether it be large scale or small, has fascinated me since I began my textiles journey. The module 'Design, Production and Application' was a university set brief working in partnership with John Lewis to develop the essential skills a young designer would need to do this. With the last weave project I completed requiring a collection of fashion fabrics I chose an interiors concession within John Lewis to develop and expand my portfolio body. After extensive research and visits to view the concessions I chose to design a collection of soft furnishing fabrics for 'Harlequin'. With a theme of nature and animals running throughout virtually all their products, I wanted to create fabrics that would fit in with their aesthetic but also bring something new to the table and that is where texture came in.

Jacquard weaves with structures that allowed textured yarns to sit on the surface became the focal point of my collection alongside a series of double cloth block woven fabrics. Close up details of butterfly wings and technical drawings were re worked on Scotweave to form these jacquard designs. My colour palette came together from inspiration images taken on a research visit to a butterfly and insect farm. Neutrals in creams, greys and pale pinks combined with bold highlights of mustard, hot pink and teal to create a balanced palette that showcased the wide ranging tones of nature. Above are some examples of examples of the jacquard fabrics I produced and below is my finalised company board and a drawing developed into a design using Photoshop.

With there being 3 people in each group for the dobby looms, using our initial company research to design our double cloth warps we chose two differing weights of cotton to create a soft and luxurious feel that was in keeping with the brand we had chose to design for (see image below). I wanted a warp that would create some wonderfully delicate neutrals and would not dull any bold yarn choices but would also work well creating various weight fabrics for the collection. With the theme I had chosen to explore being quite illustrative I found it quite challenging designing using the block threading. However, double cloth block design is something that I really wanted to explore so I’m extremely pleased I got to develop my understand and experiment with this way of weaving.

Designing in this manner and ensuring every fabric I produced had the technical information to be put into production allowed me to begin to understand how industry production really works. Things such as ensuring the beat rate was firm enough throughout a whole sample to questioning whether this fabric could work as a lampshade, developed skills I definitely used and needed on my recent work experience in industry.