Hand Constructed Fabrics for Fashion

I’m running this course again at Wimbledon School of Art, London, 28-31st July 2008.

This course is a specialist, intensive and enjoyable 4-day summer school for those with a love of fabric. It will be an in-depth exploration of the potential creative applications for pleating, folding and layering fabrics, structured shaping of fabrics by stuffing and gathering, including smocking, trapunto and standard quilting, ruffles, frills and Suffolk puffs and ways of applying surface decoration in the form of flat and 3D appliqué, using Bondaweb, hand stitching, stuffed appliqué and using recycled and found materials. The course will include box and knife pleats, decorative pleating, pin tucks, folds, stitch and slash, layering, cutting away, reverse appliqué, a contemporary look at cutwork using felt, silk and leather to create layered and shadowed effects and embellishing using on-seam trims and other applied techniques.

The techniques are mostly drawn from historical and traditional textiles and extensive imagery and samples will be provided for students to investigate. In all cases we will look at contemporary applications for these traditional techniques. The course allows plenty of time to experiment and develop your own ideas. The aim is to create a length of fabric suitable for a scarf or small project, or to use the techniques of your choice to embellish and decorate and existing garment. You can of course just come to learn the techniques to apply to your own work outside of the class. Textile teachers have also attended this course to learn new techniques.

The last time I ran this course it was really enjoyable and inspiring. All the students took on the ideas and created amazing work. Although it seems expensive, you will get 4 intensive days of teaching and lots of one-to-one support to learn techniques and develop design ideas. Previous students have included textile teachers, upholsterers, theatre designers, textile designers and textile degree students. Quite a lot of people treated it as a holiday and took time off work to come, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Previous students’ work from this course:

Edit: More dates added!

5-18 December 2008, 25 April-16 May 2009 (4 Saturdays).
I’ll also be teaching some other classes there in 2009, so keep an eye out. If you want to go on my mailing list for events please email me!