Hoodie Sweatshirt
Giselle Judd
Gisborne Girls' College
Year 10 Technology Textiles
Teacher: Wendy Webb
Giselle designed her sweatshirt to fit the 'surf label' clothing range popular with teenagers. She investigated the styles and fabrics used in these clothing lines during class visits to a surf shop and a fabric supply shop.
After deciding on a Pacific Island theme for her sweatshirt, Giselle worked out a range of patterns, eventually selecting her fish-bone and seed-pod motifs for printing onto the fabric.
She experimented with two types of printing: for one she carved her pattern onto wood, while the other involved gluing fabric onto MDF to make a dauber. Giselle created two block prints for each pattern and trialled how well they printed. She tested fabrics, to find out which best showed off the design, and a range of colours to see which was more effective for printing.
She also experimented with ink prints – printing photos onto fabric, and incorporating glitter or silver into the print. She concluded her trialling by testing the durability of the fabric samples when washed.
Giselle drafted some concept designs and selected the long sleeved zipped hoodie, with lining and pockets, for construction. To ensure a quality product she first sewed samples using different stitches, and tried out several bindings, before deciding what to use.
After attending a teacher-run workshop on using the embroidery machine, Giselle had planned to embroider a 'G', split over both sides of the garment. However, after being advised that this technique was quite complex, she decided to use appliqué instead. She and her teacher worked together on successfully trialling appliqué using the embroidery machine software.
She is proud of her work and often wears her hoodie. "It's really good because it looks as though I've gone into a shop and bought it and it's something I will wear. Lots of people have complimented me on how it looks and told me that they wantone. It's a nice feeling to know that it's me that made it".
Teacher comment
Giselle's work was excellent; she had lots of innovative ideas and her product was well trialled and tested to produce a quality garment. It looked like a saleable item and her friends commented on how amazing it looked.
