Fashion Textiles Pathway: Day One

Technical Skills: Digital Pattern Design:

I chose the Fashion Textiles pathway on the Design and Media Foundation and starting this have two weeks of technical skills building. On the first day this meant a Photoshop workshop with the objective of giving us the skills to create patterns digitally that could then be used on a textile product. As many (including me) in the class have little or no previous experience in using Photoshop this first day was kept very basic. We started with a being shown how to make a simple polka dot repeat pattern:

Then we were shown how to layer pattens to create a more interesting design (below: images of how I layered two different coloured dots and lowered their opacity before creating a repeat pattern):

These kinds of simple changes and stages for a repeat pattern continued for most of the day:

Changing sizes and positioning:

Changing sizes of repeat pattern

Creating a half dot pattern (repeat on different layers)

Layering patterns and cutting out from shapes

Check pattern with colour bleed

Check Pattern

Drawing textures and designs onto flat repeat patterns

After this we were shown how to create a repeat pattern when an image is more complex and not symmetrical, as many textile designs are, particularly if you are scanning in artwork to create designs. Using a sample image of clouded blue sky we saw the difficulty:

These kinds of repeat patterns result in obvious divides and so we used the cloning tool, deleted or changed the sizes in some areas and flattened the colours until we had a smooth finish:

Although I feel the patterns created in this workshop are largely uninteresting, the skills I learnt can be extrapolated to be used in more complex designs in the future. However, my understanding is still very basic and the day felt quite rushed at times, and so I feel a week's project in this area would have been more appropriate.