Forward Progress...and more SNEAK PEEKS

a little background/behind the scenes work...

 

work in progress...but things are moving right along...

More custom fabric detailing combined with our custom prints here at the Design Lab.  We're hoping things can keep progressing (on the design side, not on the baby delivery side!) as we get closer to Fashion Week which starts March 15th here in New Orleans.  We also have some great promotional video additions in the works courtesy of Luminetic Media, so stay tuned for big updates...hopefully not big embarrassments...talking is harder than it looks ;) !

 

                         

Art Show Exhibit

Had so much fun displaying a piece at the N.O.N. Gallery Design Art Showcase.  The garment isn't 100% finished...but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to display next to some very talented artists and an eager audience.  The showcase was intended to display different genres of art and each design process from start to finish of production.  I tried my best to give a glimpse into what goes into each garment design process...inspiration, rough sketches, patternmaking, fabric design, pattern placement, construction, and finishing...to name a few of the key components - the last image is how Ayo Scott displayed all the different pieces at the Gallery; couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

inspiration: religious iconography - this print is found hidden in the fabric

 

inspiration: religious iconography - this print is found hidden in the fabric

Fabric manipulation: creating a perforated vegan leather for the panels

Fabric manipulation: creating a perforated vegan leather for the panels

pattern/print placement: figuring out what part of the textile to feature within the pattern pieces

embroidered details

embroidered details for accent

"final" product!

On display at the N.O.N. Gallery - loved how Ayo Scott curated the entire event!

Custom Fabrics...more than just prints...

Expanding on our custom prints, we also have several other unique fabric traits going on in the upcoming Sacre Coeur Collection here at the Design Lab...custom embroidered pieces will be seen throughout the collection as well...check out our design process using this AMA-ZA-ZING Brother 6-needle embroidery machine (Marcella is one lucky lady, and we're so thankful/lucky to be able to use her machine throughout this collection!)

Check out some sneak peeks of preliminary fabrications...HOPING (fingers crossed) to be showing off our custom prints and embroidery at the upcoming Art Show this Saturday, February 8th (see our previous blog for deets about the art show)...just the tip of our embroidery iceberg...get ready to see MUCH more about this amazing machine and our crazy experiments...

a little troubleshooting in action...setting up embroidery hoops in an experimental way...

"it's alive!" testing out our experiment...

just the tip of the experimental iceberg...

 

print placement for each specific pattern piece is crucial!

 

Come check us out on Saturday, February 8th!

Upcoming Art Show

Have the privilege of calling New Orleans artist, Ayo Scott, a great friend.  He has an upcoming show, and he asked if I'd be interested in showing a garment.  I told him I'd be crazy to say yes right now, so of course, I said YES...

This exhibit will show the relationships between ART and DESIGN. Its focus is centered around demystifying the processes of art / design creation and highlighting the work of Design Media (a fresh young design firm based in New Orleans). The show will display graphic design, product design, furniture design, fashion design, painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and an installation curated by Carl Joe Williams and Ayo Scott, and a spoken word performances curated by Gian Francisco Smith.

I'm busting it even harder in the studio to try and get a new piece together to show this Saturday, February 8th at 6pm at the Joan Mitchell Center (1000 N. Rampart, NOLA).  Link to the event on Facebook and more about the artists involved can be found here.

Still TBD what piece I'll be showing...but hoping to show a piece from the upcoming "Sacre Coeur" Collection by the Design Lab (which will be officially unveiled during New Orleans Fashion Week in March)...fingers crossed...I'll attempt to post progress/updates before the show...

FABRIC EXPLOSION...(in a good way)

ok ok ok...I know I seem excited 24-7, but I swear that's not the case...this is GENUINE EXCITEMENT Y'ALL...trust me, most of the time I'm pulling my hair out in distress, but in this instance no hair has been lost...yet...WE GOT OUR FABRICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is most definitely extended Christmas like feeling when we receive fabrics over here, but when it's a custom design that you've slaved over and waited forever for, it's like Christmas on crack or something...hard to describe, but in a good way (and let it be known we are not condoning the use of crack, especially on Christmas, but I digress, WE'RE EXCITED)!!

We had planned on using local printer, Blissett Textiles for our entire order, but she's been having some issues with her machine, and while we'd love to stay local (New Orleans local) we ended up outsourcing to North Carolina, and we couldn't be happier with our Spoonflower creations (and glad to stay domestic)!  While they weren't our first choice, they were AMAZINGLY helpful throughout the entire process, GREAT customer service, and a good fabric selection for such short notice (we were able to remain organic and eco-friendly, which we were very happy about).  Special shout out to Emma over there at Spoonflower, I know I was one annoying customer ;) thanks for putting up with me

We still plan on having some fabrics locally printed, just not all of them, unfortunately we needed to get started ASAP, so we had to do a majority through Spoonflower, but we're still so happy to use Camilla and Blissett Textiles also :)

Loving our new tech!

So I know I've already raved about the Dell Inspiron 23, but it's just making design life SO much easier and so much more FUN...

When dealing with incorporating custom prints into a collection, there's A LOT of unseen work...using Adobe Illustrator is a key tool that has helped us to narrow down print selection and placement for specific pattern pieces.  Once again, I hope I'm not giving too much away with our images below...but we're having a lot of fun with this collection...just hoping we can get it all done in about 3-4 weeks (insert crazy face)...enjoy some preliminary roughs/thoughts below

Truly Domestic...

Admiring our peers...

An Oakland-based label, Voices of Industry, is one of the rare few to use fiber farmed and spun in the US, then handwoven into true cotton shirts

This company puts us to shame, but really there aint no shame in our game...we're doing our best to stay as socially responsible as possible through our production processes, and we're very proud of our efforts!  Anyway, we discovered a great article about, Voices of Industry, by CoolHunting about products "made in the USA," they make a very good point, this disclaimer "can be misleading: Even if the labor is domestic, fabrics might have been dyed, woven or cut in foreign countries and there's also the question of where materials such as threads or zippers are sourced."  97.5% of apparel sold in the United States is made internationally. 

With all of the controversy over international production (especially with the garment factory collapse and wage discrepancies in Asia), we're proud to be producing domestically on the labor side of things.  As well as focusing efforts in socially responsible fabric sourcing (staying organic, vegan leathers and suedes etc) as well as creating custom prints and having those produced domestically as well!
Stay tuned, our new fabrics come in Wednesday and we're STOKED and ready to post!

Voices of Industry designs.