Design Assistant: Part Two

 Karen Luong

For the rest of the intership I worked with Karen on her collection. She is a weave student, her work consits of light tones of grey and blues and pops of yellow, it's very fresh, clean and sophisticated.
She used light fabrics like organza which cover lightly over the woven garments which are thicker in comparison. This is the line-up of her collection, the first three garments from the left are the ones which were made.
As a weave student you have to work strategically, you can only produce the fabric to the size of the loom you are working on. This barrier has been overcome by many of the students, the weave is made and put into panels on the garment, I think it looks very modern and highlights the details in the weave.
In similarity to knit, the time taken to make a weave is painstakingly long. So each sample made is precious. Especially when light, thin yarns are used, in Karen's work she used a mixture of soft wools like mohair with shiny yarns like embroidery thread. The woven samples were all different but worked together really well, large panels were made which were metallic with ridges and an ombre effect, this was used mainly as the base of the garments and then patchworked with other samples, the smaller samples have more detail and take longer, they have a mixture of different techniques and yarns. The statement piece in my opinion was the mohair bomber jacket, made entirely out of weave, I like the contrast between the fluffy mohair and the blocked yellow parts in the weave.

My job was helping her work on a woven crop top, the woven pieces had to be patchworked together. I layed them out on the table and we had to strategically place them so that we were left with minimum waste. We placed them so that they were symmetrical. I like the mixture of all the different weaves together. I then sewed them together and pressed them down so that they lay flat and cut the pattern piece out. After cutting the piece out you have to get it through the overlocker straight away or the weave will unravel.

Patchworked Weave

Weave Sample- Metallic Ombre with Mohair contrast

metallic embroidery thread- weave sample

Mohair Bomber Jacket before the ribbing and zip is attached