Choosing the right fabric to make clothes has always been a great source of excitement for students doing fashion designing. Interesting fabrics, African and Indian prints, dazzling coloured silks etc. have been used for these purpose.

Yet, being able to design their own fabrics adds an impressive dimension to your students' fashion designing project! And this is not as difficult as it seems!

Design Sources
Very often, the prospect of coming up with their own patterns can prove daunting to many students.

However, sources for patterns and designs can in fact be found all around us. Instead of being inventive, encourage your students to look at buildings, galleries and even natural patterns around them, such as animal prints, trees and even puddles on the ground after a rainy day.

Once they have discovered a source of inspiration, there are many ways to go about using it. Firstly, it is necessary to capture the image in some way. This may be simple if it is in a book or magazine or postcard. However, where the object of interest is an iron railing, architecture or some forgotten artifact in a museum, a camera is recommended over the more traditional sketchbook (both for the speed as well as the fact that there may be something about the pattern that may be missed out when sketching).

Once the pictures are developed, the next step is to consider their colours, styles, and forms and to spend some time with a sketchbook, doodling and playing with the images. Encourage your students to keep all their ideas of patterns such as spots, zigzags and loops in the sketchbook so that they can flick through it for inspiration in the future.

For example, the third design on the left is borrowed quite obviously from the familiar multi-coloured patterns on playing cards.

Materials Required:

• Sketchbook/Cartridge Pad
• Marker Pens/Watercolours
• Silk Paints/Textile Paints

• See links to textile design sites
• See our courses on silk painting