Emily Twinn-Dorey
Week 1 – Introductoin to Sustainability
Sustainable Textiles Inspired Print Designs
Week 2 Emerging technologies in fashion
I used an online AI generator to create these prints and patterns with the keywords: purple, green and leaf, I used colour inspiration from my pallets in the previous sessions. I took the idea of emerging technologies and thought of creating print design using AI. I would say the first and fourth image have the most potential for prints, the other results show how AI can still be developed and people physically drawing the designs can lead to a batter result. I took these designs and created my own inspired by them.
Week 3: Nature
Fashion has immense impacts on our planet, the fabric waste, fast fashion, even water waste and huge carbon emissions. From today’s powerpoint I have learned that 85% of textiles are sent to landfills, thats 21 billion tonnes per year, knowing this, I have decided to create a fabric sample with scraps of fabric, and print onto it with other recycled materials which would’ve normally gone to waste. I strongly believe in recycling and repurposing once loved garments into something new. On researching this topic, I have discovered that only 1% of clothing is recycled.
COSH! – 27th August 2021 https://cosh.eco/en/articles/how-to-recycle-second-hand-clothing#:~:text=But%20how%20much%20of%20this,textile%20waste%20is%20pure%20loss.
We need this number to go up in the future as the fabric waste is destroying our planet.
My textile sample here is one possibility of how the scraps from garments could be used to create something new. When all combined together they could create a larger piece of fabric, which could then be used to create sustainable clothing or another kind of fabric based product.
Week 4: Cultural Sustainability
From the online session, I have learnt a lot about the struggle some countries have when trying to maintain culture in their fashion, this is because of new machinery being able to cheaply make clothing. These modern technologies have caused loss in jobs and loss of tradition. Cultural textiles take “weeks or years” to create, and in the modern day, people do not have the time to create them anymore. I researched Hasan and Nasreen Askari’s over 400 piece collection of traditional Pakistani textiles, I found some images of a bride’s veil and a horses trapping, from their collection. I took inspiration from the patterns and textures on these and created a combination collage with crochet piece, I wanted to combine colours and textures from the pieces and show them in my own work.
I was really inspired by the overall warm colour pallet and the repeating shapes, the textures inspired my layering the collage and to show how the repeating patterns are very traditional, I digitally made my sample into a repeat fabric pattern.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/27/a-nations-fabric-couple-bringing-craft-of-pakistan-to-the-world – quotes, information and image origin. – The Guardian, 27th October 2019
Week 5: Empathy
Empathy to me is about coming to term with differences, I wanted to show this by using contrasting colours. Contrasting colours are most pleasing to the eye, even though they are so different, they work well together, this is my way of showing how people can empathise with each other because of their opposite qualities and experiences and tendencies. purple and yellow symbolise power, there is power in empathy.
For the Into To blog I have uploaded all work for the 4 weeks, I loved having the chance to work with different media in my responses. In week one: Sustainability, I really enjoyed taking a physical textile sample I created and making it into a repeat pattern by creating drawings using the shapes of each separate sample. My first response using POSCA pens didn’t work well in making it into a pattern, so I used promarkers for a looser drawing which worked well to create a repeat. I’m really happy with the layout of the colours in the final design. Week two wasn’t my favorite as I like drawing my own designs, and using AI to create my response felt too simple, which is why I developed the idea further by taking inspiration from the AI results and made my own digital print. From this I have learnt that I much prefer using my own creativity rather than using new technologies. I enjoyed experimenting with technologies which I haven’t used before and I have learnt it could be a useful way for designers to make an instant print design. I loved the theme of nature for week three and I think the way I responded very well to the effects of fashion on nature, I learnt some shocking statistics about the impacts which inspired me to come up with a solution for reusing fabric cut offs. I have been inspired to research further into this problem for my report.
Emily’s blog covers 5 weeks; week 1: Introduction to Sustainability, week 2:
Emerging technologies in fashion, week 3: Nature, week 4: Cultural Sustainability and week 5: Empathy.
All in all, it shows that printed textile creations are influenced by a variety of ideas, methods and forms.
The first week’s theme, Sustainable Textile Technology, is also included in Sustainable Fashion. Sustainable fashion is a behaviour and process that promotes the transformation of fashion products and systems towards greater ecological integrity and social justice. Sustainable fashion is not only about fashion textiles or products, but also about the entire fashion system, which means that interdependent social, cultural and ecological aspects are taken into account.
Emily’s use of Posca pen drawings, combined with hand and machine stitching of some scrap fabrics together, is an example of sustainable textile technology.
The second week’s theme was Emerging Technologies in Fashion. In an era of global digitisation, computers, machine learning and artificial intelligence systems can shape clothing and textile production, introducing new, sophisticated, more optimised and environmentally friendly fashion products.Emily used an AI generator to create a number of prints and patterns, combining her own ideas to create her own designs. Whilst AI is currently a long way off from completely replacing fashion designers, it does hold the promise of being able to provide more inspiration for designers and more interesting options for customers with personalised needs.
The theme of the third week was nature. It may sound unbelievable that fashion is a highly polluting industry that can go unnoticed, but it is, and the fashion industry is the second biggest polluter in the world, after the petrochemical industry.
Emily used fabric scraps sewn together to create fabric samples and then dipped them into acrylic paint using recycled water bottles to make prints, a testament to sustainable fashion and the need to protect the environment.
The fourth week’s theme was cultural sustainability. In a context where machines are replacing handwork in the fashion industry, Emily drew inspiration and ideas from traditional Pakistani textiles to create a collage with crochet work, digitally creating samples into repetitive fabric patterns. Taking inspiration from tradition and using modern technology to create work is the right way to practise the theory of using emerging technologies without abandoning traditional culture.