Hello everyone 😀 so sorry I did no posts last week, I’ve been working flat-out and got into a bit of a work, come home, eat, sleep routine.  Very boring.  I think I might have had the coming-back-from-holidays-to-rainy-Belfast Blues.

But I’m fine now as I’m going on holidays again to Berlin not next Monday but the Monday after! (If anyone has any tips for me for going to Berlin or places they think I should go I’d be grateful as I’ve never been to Germany before!)

So, as I’ve been working all week I thought I’d give you an insight into what I’ve been doing.

I started a fashion placement in April with the lovely Bronagh Griffin from nineteenthirty.  Nineteenthirty is a Menswear fashion label based in Belfast, specialising in luxury, limited edition shirts, ties and scarves.  ABOVE is one of my favourite shirts from the ‘Voyager’ collection :).

Here’s the website: Go take a looksy!  www.nineteenthirty.co.uk

I go to Bronagh on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons as I have to fit it around my other job.  While I’m there I do things like stock intake, shirt folding, updating the websites inventory and fashion illustration for the website.  However as well as this Bronagh sets me projects so I build up my portfolio while I’m with her.

My first project which I’m doing at the mo is on children’s wear and it’s called ‘GARDEN ADVENTURES.’  So I’m going to show you what I’ve been doing on that :).

This project is for children’s clothes from the age range of 0-2 years.

1.  Inspiration from magazines

I’ve always been the type of person who gets an idea, does all the designing and then at the end I have to go and look for artists/designers/inspiration that links to my work.  This time I really wanted to try to do it the right way round, so I started making collages of inspiration from magazines for my ‘Garden Adventures’ theme.

Above is another collage, I wanted to do each one with different colour schemes, so this one is very rich and vibrant in comparison to the previous one.  On the right page I’ve documented some ideas I’ve had so I don’t forget them!

2.  Inspiration from children’s book illustration

I wanted to take some inspiration from illustration as I will have to design prints/applique for the garments as part of this project.  Lauren Child is one of my fave illustrators – best known for the ‘Charlie and Lola’ series.  I love her style of collaging and different textures within her books.  On the right hand page is my own illustration.

3.  Market Research 

I wanted to get a good rounded look at what is popular for children’s wear this season.  I went to Mark’s and Spencer’s, NEXT, Mini Mode at Boots, Mama’s and Papa’s and Pumpkin Patch and took pictures of all the styles I liked for babies.

Above is how I’ve displayed my research in my Bushi book.  I printed all the photos out as contact sheets – that way they’re easy to access and they don’t just sit on my hard drive collecting virtual dust.  As you can see I like to draw and write on them; I note down anything I like/dislike about the garments as well as initial ideas I get from them.

Market Research – Favourites

Above is where I’ve stuck in some of my favourite garments for girls and written in more detail what I like about them.

Below for baby boys 🙂 :

Market research: Details

Here I’ve looked at details such as stitching, print, embroidery etc and what I like about them.

4.  Practicing illustration

Baby Girl’s

I’ve never designed children’s wear before and I was unsure how to draw the clothes on my template; I’m so used to the skinny, standing, female templates for women’s wear.  To practice, I took some of my favourite garments from my market research and tried to draw the image onto the template.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the left is a little romper from M&S (soooo cute!?) and on the right is my illustration!

3 Illustrations for baby girls!

Below are the garments they are drawn from:

 I found the dresses quite hard as with womenswear all the figures are standing so the way that the dress falls is pretty straight forward.  I had to work out how the hem would fall around the baby’s thighs – I used my baby sister to help me do this :D:

HI!

Baby Boys:

The dungarees on the right were reallly hard, I still don’t think I’ve got it spot on so I’ll have to do more dungarees.

The garments they’re drawn from:

So my dears, that’s all I’ve done so far! Hope you enjoyed this post, I’ll keep you posted as I add more work to the project.  Any questions or comments just ask me on my facebook – BELFASH BLOGPOST.  I really want to do a style spot tomorrow so fingers crossed that it’s a nice day again :D.

Nuala xo