UNIT X | Final Evaluation

Unit X has been a really exciting unit for me and overall I am proud of what I have achieved both as an individual and as a group. I have allowed myself to explore and push my interest in fashion and have learnt lots of new skills, such as improving my illustrations and learning important fashion processes' such as creating a muse. As a group our strength and success has come from our ability to work really well as a collective, from the start we have honoured each others strengths and weakness' and continually helped each other, i have learnt so much from the fashion girls and they were so open to helping me learn skills that i didn't yet posses, I hope this was the same in reverse and that i was able to provide them with new skills from a textiles perspective. 


By gaining a strong theme from the very beginning, one that we were all greatly interested in, meant that our research was extensive and informative and by not only looking at motocross but mechanical engineering as well, this continually opened up new doors for development. As a textiles student I was surprised at how different the fashion design process is to a textiles led one, to say fashion and textiles run hand in hand in industry, I expected them to be similar in process , however I learnt very early on this wasn't the case. I had to learn quickly and adapt to the fashion working style, sometimes this resulted in me feeling quite lost and doubting my skills, but luckily for me i had great group partners who always helped me when i felt stuck or lost in the process. 

My main contribution to our project has been through digital print, embroidery and laser cutting. I was able to bring processes to the group that some of the other girls weren't familiar with, in particular using the ethos multi head machine. By involving digital techniques in our line up this allowed us to create a variation in costings through our line up, which is something Tom had expressed in his initial presentation. My work in the laser room also resulted in some really exciting results, by taking found materials such as the seat belts and lazering in to them, this added a really exciting element to some of our garments. Tom mentioned that he really liked the James Long logo engraved into the seatbelt, which was great to hear and receive praise for!

I was also really happy that the girls in my group trusted my illustration and digital skills to allow me to have a big part in the end line up design. My photoshop skills allowed me to professionally add our prints into the garments and using scans of materials allowed me to create feelings of texture throughout the line up. I suggested to the group that we should leave sections of the line up blank and use hand illustration to fill them in, i was so happy that the group liked this idea, as i feel using hand illustration really lifted the colours in our line up and created a much more interesting end result, making the garments look much more animated. 

Looking back on our design process and the end line up as a whole i feel we created a really exciting collection, one which has a really strong theme that can be seen from the very first drawings to the finalised garments. Overall i found this to be a really challenging unit, working in a completely new style was difficult at times, however i feel that i used my skills appropriately to overcome these obstacles without losing my original flare and style.