A Nasty Hickup In My Path Of Becoming A Fashion Designer

Okay, first word to anybody trying to become a fashion designer without going to school to do so. My dears, my poor poor dears please listen to me very carefully, this is not Chanel's era, we all need to do things differently now, you must learn everything you need to know as a fashion designer before you attempt to wing it on partial knowledge, okay? This is what just happened to me, I contacted a clothing company and they were interested in my designs and wanted to acquire the specs for my garment designs, I don't yet have pattern making skill though and had actually forgotten about the technical aspects of fashion illustrations (the flat 'technical' line drawings used by the pattern makers) and so, there is no practical way to for the company to do business with me in the way that this business is run now. And that's okay, because although I've been dis-illusioned and dis-appointed I was aiming to learn all I had to know as a fashion designer any way. So I haven't of course been knocked off my path. I haven't and you shouldn't be either. Just keep going and focus on the next step in front of you and not how long the journey is.

Anyway though, I've joined the fashion industry network and I've been making a few friends along the way. There are also some products that I know are going to help me out in my path and here's a list of which wonderful things they are: The Lutterloh Pattern Making System, Islander Sewing's Industrial sewing training DVDs and 'Il Figurino Di Moda' Fashion Design Techniques Book and the Portfolio Presentation for Fashion Design book (I've just ordered this last one) So I'm digging in my heals like usual and continuing to find my way.

I wish you all a wonderful day,

Ayisha (Emma)

I'm Back From The Dead Ya'll

Oh, the problems that hit you when you're trying to make it in life. My computer broke down, did I tell you that? (I have to use my brother's now, a total bummer) Then I've been unable to log into my blogs here, not been getting too much money made and been up to my ears in anemia and too much house work and errands and not enough sleep. Well, I'm taking a breather right now, sort of.

Here's a little change in plans, thanks to a friend of mine, I'm going to be working on writing and working on a cool fashion related web site, unlike anything else on the web right now. You guys (all my fellow fashion enthusiasts out there) are going to love it. I'm not giving away any secrets yet though, you'll have to wait at least a month or so I'm thinking but, I'm working on it. Anyway, I've got to go for now.

Have a good one

Finally Working On My Collection Again

Whoa, I'm finally working on my collection here again. Got 3 color ways I'm playing around with, I just love them. Can't wait to get started on the samples, but I've got to focus on finishing the presentation for this collection first and putting food on the table. My boss hasn't gotten around to giving me more written assignments, let's just say I'm scared. More bills too, well my philosophy is this, when you have to wait, don't wait, do something else that needs to get done, no matter how scared you are, be productive while you're waiting, work on something you've been working on and be careful not to start anything new. This painful delay gives me a chance to work on my collection so I should be grateful, just grateful with an ulcer starting but never the less grateful.

Also I've got to concentrate on what I need to do to get the collection illustration ready into a complete presentation/portfolio, 1. color everything in the different color ways 2. do some from behind 3. create the front and back 'flat' views (this is to show the basic pattern shapes, shows you know what you're doing, helps out the pattern makers) 4. arrange everything on your final 'support' whether it be digital or not 5. decorate the support to complete the 'look' or 'mood' After that you're done and ready to show the world your work or get busy putting together your samples or rather both at the same time.

A Few More Set Backs But Keep On Kicking

Hey now, my computer just broke down a few days ago and business is going to be seriously slowed down for a while. I've got to redo all the the Photoshop line touch-up stuff on my collection pieces and I've got my bills to pay. Well this is a littel goods news/bad news kind of thing. The credit place gave me another chance with the situation I keep telling them (my brother skipped out on me and racked up his cell phone bill with premium calls, I've got a 900 dollar mistake on my hands) and I'm not working a regular job, yes it's no exageration it's extremely hard to keep the food on the table (I wasn't able to afford toillete paper and toothpaste okay, it's no joke) Any way though, my boss has apparently got more writting work coming my way, I hope I've got a bit of a raise coming, cross my fingers, so I'll be able to swing with, God willing. Lord knows I'm willing to work for it. One of my brothers is here helping me pay the bills so together we should be able to pull through.

Also, the folks at Lutterloh pattern making system got back to me and said that yes I can put together different patterns to come up with my own patterns! So yeah, I'm going to get that package as soon as I can and then, then, I'll be able to create my own samples! I'm so excited by the thought of this, all I have to do is get through this financial crunch and I'll get another chance.

Also, I haven't been able to get any volunteer models in so that I can do my makeup artist course, well, I had another idea I'm going to advertise it like this:

Free Elf Cosmetic High Quality Product try out/Marylin Makeover

Somebody should be interested in that, I'll see how it flies...

Any way I got to get to work here, keep you posted

Collection in Progress

Well, last night I managed to get quite a lot of work done, not only did I get my mood board done finally but I prepped all my designs for coloring on the computer. This involved opening up all the files in Adobe Photoshop 7 and...

1. Converting them to grey scale, this allows you to more efficiently 'clean up' your image later on. Basically what your doing is extracting your line work and throwing the rest away.

2. Go to brightness and contrast and increase both values to 50 and hit okay.

3. Take the magic wand and make sure it's value is at 50

4. You need to get rid of the grey background of your work so you can complete your images, with the magic wand choose a grey area that's a bit lighter than the middle tone of entire background quality and click.

5. The selection is not always perfect but you can do a light clean up after ward with a 'soft' eraser, it's better than getting rid of some of your line work, you don't want to waste time doing that.

6. Get your image back to RGB (or CMYK if you're planning to print them out after, wise choice although not my favorite because blues and greens in cmyk are a lot duller in hue and tend to be more of a challenge to use)

7. When you're ready to color them up create a layer on your image and make sure it's in 'Overlay' mode so you don't have to re-do line work as it will just show through your colors. You're done for now!

I'll keep you posted on my progress hope the info helps you all out :)

My First Digital Mood Board

Hi everybody, here is my first ever mood board period. I usually just keep the ideas all in my head, but professionally you can't do that any way so I've got to change my practices. Be sure to let me know what you think. Thanks

Ahh Life, Another day Another delay

It's alright, I've been dealing with this for years, any way a little secret I've learnt that if you perpetually think about what you're going to do to achieve your goal before you actually go through with it, it'll go smoother and faster than if you just sat down and did. Well that only goes so far. Had to catch up with some funds, my home job employer has given me some lower pay pieces of work to do so it's consumed my time and I've been feeling really worn out with my little daughter having a growing spurt while she's on the breast full time, ahhhh! Bare with me.

I've recently found out about a pattern making system (lutterloh)I want to get my hands on, for $125 I can get it and I've got my mind set on it after I email them and ask can I use the system to create my own patterns from it, give or take a few changes/modifications, and the creative such, design lines will always be a custom job, that's what it's all about, but you want your basic pattern to be somewhat conventional unless you're izzy miyaki or balenciaga, I don't even like their stuff although it is a break and a sometimes eye opening lead into creative thinking.

I prefer Alexander McQueen and John Galliano myself, LLOOVVEE THEM!

Well as for my mood board for my collection, I've managed to get all the pictures off the internet for it, and now all I have to do is put it all together in adobe and decide on some color way variations, (I apologize if I said this already in an earlier post) Also for my collection designs themselves, I've got to start working on those, first repairing the line work, you do that by first putting the photos to grey scale in adobe, then enhancing the lines. Then you convert the images back to rgb and you're set to go with your color work.

When I got my mood board finished I'll post it here.

Bye for now everybody, got to make the weekend mean something for my husband :)

Mood Board Delay

Well now, yesterday I wanted to put together a digital mood board with three color ways and everything that led to my new collection. However my brothers popped on by for a surprise visit. And my day went to hell, then I got busy with my virtual assistant job, then my house work then more VA...you get the picture. Hopefully, today will be different, only thing is, today I'm worried about one of my cats again, one took of two weeks ago and never came back, now another one has taken off last night and hasn't returned yet. I'm going to get ulcers I assure all of you. this kitty is fat too although she's obsessed with running around outside and I'm afraid she might be so fat and slow that she got hit by a car. Then again maybe she's just hiding from the rain. I really hope so. If I'm losing my cats out here though I'm going to start getting suspicious of my neighbors. Mood board, mood board, I have to think about my mood board. You know those are supposed to be put together before your collection, I know that. It's just that it was so well ingrained in my mind that I never needed to put it together for my own use and inspiration, I'm just now putting it together for the sake of my portfolio. :) I'm not showing off, I'm just talented.

Back to the Grid But With Plans

Always have your plans, gotta make some money today though, get back to my fashion collection when I've got a gap of time available. trying to develop some plans with a friend from US of Africa and take care of my kids and my sick cats. One of the kittens have swollen front paws and diarrhea and I don't even have grocery money let alone vet fees to spend on him. I'm trying some ground black seed though, it's apparently a powerful anti-microbial and immune support. And mustard seed powder, you may not know this but it contains the now coveted selenium, anti-cancer agent as well as other things. I'll start a new blog for my cats and herbal log there.

Yeahh! Got My Sketch Work Done For My Collection!

Okay, now we're talking, I've got all the sketch work done for my new collection, I've taken pictures of all of them, I have to load them up to my computer now from my camera so I can do the color work on them and other stuff, flats and so on.

The other day I went on apparel search.com and tried to find out where my collection would be well received, Europe is almost a sure shot. Well I was talking to my husband about it when he called and he was asking me afterwards "how do you know you can have a job like that? wonder if you can't keep having those wonderful ideas?" His seeming lack of faith in my imagination and ability really kicked me but I told him something really valuable I've learned over the years thanks to reading Julian Seamans books, there are no original ideas, and no such thing as artists block. When you need ideas for a new collection, you don't necessarily look for inspiration to come from your own head, ideas, concepts, nothing. What you need to do is be yourself, cultivate a love and appreciation for everything visual, art, architecture, history, all cultures, museums, landscape, past fashion, so called futuristic fashion, movies and so on, even cultivate the ability to appreciate the visual elements of things you don't like or rather be able to spot whatever there is about them that is worth something of note.

You love everything, so what next? Okay, what you've got to do now and this is where being yourself comes in, anything that speaks to you, think about it, look for what ever things you've seen you'd like to combine in different ways to produce some interesting, functional, wearable and beautiful ideas for garments, that's simply what I do. It's true you don't do this very well if you don't culture a love for visual elements everywhere from pretty much everything, but that is something you can learn. Don't forget to learn about different design elements, garment cuts for example so that you've got a variety of them as well that can be combined with your visual chemistry's.

While your putting things together like that you've also got to keep current fashion trends in mind, see if some of them can be thrown tastfully into you collection's design and also be aware of color trends to for what ever forward season you're designing for that way you're collection will be up to date. Have fun!

Every Step Brings You Closer

I watched 'Signe Chanel' again on youtube, I love french documentaries especially about fashion, got to find some more. I've got a little more than half my sketches left to do on my collection before I can get them on my computer for finishing. When I'm done I want to do three things

1. put together my fashion design/art resume
2. post my new collection on all the free portfolio/fashion portfolio sites
3. send my links over to all the Turkish and Kuwait and whatever other clothing manufacturing companies that I think may be interested in my work.

Sounds like a plan, I want to see if someone will hire me to design even without me knowing patternmaking. Also I've got to remember that I should draw up the flat images of the garments to accompany the illustrations. Those are for the patternmakers there to understand the garment better so they can make a pattern that will re-create the depiction of the illustration. See? My mind is thoroughly on my dreams.

Any way though, I've got to get back to my writing work, just had to drop in and let everyone know that I am still in the fashion design hopeful sling. I'm just stuck like the pig in the mud of life. Wait Till The Summer! Oh God, I plan to be done with my new collection way before that, and I think I'll make it the trend cast colors for this coming fall and winter navy blue and brown. Well that's a wrap, back to the grind folks.