Graduate Collection: An Interview with Stylist, Layla Abounour

An interview I had with stylist, Layla Abounour has now been published in Flutter Magazine. Click here to read.

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Capsule Collection: Pattern Cutting and Construction

This weekend was a rather busy and productive one. Half of my collection has been sewn up, hooray! After moving all the furniture out of my way in the living room to create my pattern cutting 'floor-table' I started working on the printed garments: 

 

First of all, I was pleased to find that I had enough length of fabric to create the dress I wanted instead of having to change it into a top. However, this added length meant that I didn't have enough fabric left over for sleeves - doh!  So I decided a sleeveless dress was the way forward. 
This capsule collection for Cagecity is based on my graduate work which featured fitted, printed garments. For the capsule collection, however, I decided to create a slightly oversized, boxier silhouette as the pieces are one-off garments to be sold online, meaning that customers haven't got the chance to try it on first. With a loose fitting silhouette, my collection will be more versatile, suiting a wider range of body-types and hopefully more potential customers! So, I opted for a slightly A-line shift dress:

The neoprene fabric was straightforward to sew but the jersey lining did give me a slight headache whilst I tried to figure out how to deal with it on a domestic machine... Sewing jersey when you don't have a machine specifically set up for it can be very difficult indeed! A great way to solve this problem is to use zig zag stitches instead of the straight stitch - this prevents the jersey from puckering up. Once I was past that hurdle, everything was smooth sailing and my dress was complete:

I'm not going to stop there though as I think this dress could do with some surface interest. During my graduate collection I experimented with using bright embroidery on top of my prints to add some interest and more layers to the artwork. I really liked the effect but unfortunately I didn't get the chance to use this on my garments due to lack of time. I plan on finally using this for my Cagecity collection. Here is a sample of the idea: 

Dress finished, I moved onto the top. For this I used the same pattern as the dress to get a uniform silhouette within the collection. All I needed to do was add a sleeve pattern and decrease the length of the pattern pieces and voila! complete.

Pretty sure I've inhaled a lot of neoprene fibres during the process and I am covered in threads but I guess that's the look I'm going to be pulling off this week as I make the rest of my collection... stay tuned.

Capsule Collection: Digital Prints - Making Progress!

Spent all evening today getting my print files sorted on Photoshop so I can get them sent off for production... so it's been a bit stressful. I decided to go with Bags of Love for two of my prints and found that they print on neoprene like I used for my grad collection - not a fabric seen much on the high street but designers like Balenciaga use it often and it is slowly making it's way to the regular consumer. 
Haven't been so lucky with CAT Digital though as my file doesn't seem to be uploading... Hopefully they will get back to me soon about this. Anyway, I thought I'd show you a sneak preview!

All of these designs will be available from Cagecity in the near future and I will keep you posted on how I'm getting on with my collection when my prints arrive :)

As for dealing with the stress... I've just come across this lovely quote:

Capsule Fashion Collection: Digital Print

I've been working on creating a capsule collection for online fashion store, Cagecity which showcases up and coming brands. They collaborate with new designers to help them get started in the industry and provide a platform for designers to sell their clothing. My first collection for Cagecity will be based on my graduate collection which was based on cutaway forms and strong floral prints.
The capsule collection will be made up of 5 pieces - here are some designs in their initial stages:

Getting fabrics digitally printed can be very expensive so I've been searching the web to try to find some cheaper alternatives to high end print companies such as CAT Digital. I found two websites that offer printing and seemed reasonable in price: Bags of Love and Woven Monkey. The prices end up being around £20-30 cheaper than CAT. 

To test out the companies' printing quality I ordered some samples. Ideally I wanted to test their cotton samples but I couldn't seem to find the option for that on Bags of Love so I chose another fashion fabric they offered - Duchess Satin. The print quality was excellent, crisp imagery and bold colour:

and the back:

Unfortunately the same couldn't be said for Woven Monkey's sample which came out faded:

and the back:

This is made more evident when you compare the two samples together: 

Bags of Love also offer quite a big range of different fabrics but Woven Monkey only offer 3 cotton based fabrics so I will definitely be using Bags of Love for some of my pieces to help bring the cost down without sacrificing print quality :)

To view their fabrics visit: http://www.bagsoflove.co.uk/products/fabric-printing.aspx

My Cagecity collection will be available for the Spring 2014 season. To view my graduate collection visit: http://www.notjustalabel.com/sunna_naseer

To visit Cagecity: https://www.dresscagecity.com/