FIDM: Quarter 3 Begins

Hi Everyone! Thanks for all the lovely comments on the dress so far!  I'm definitely going to make other versions of it.

I forgot to show you this:

This is what I came home to (the Boyfriend's house) after my 7 hr drive in the pouring rain up to Northern California.  The Boyfriend set this all up before he went to work (minus the Pearl) so when I arrived I had the rose petals, the love note, a movie, the chocolate, flowers, drinks, and other snacks waiting for me.  He even bought Pearl Beggin' Strips!  I'm so lucky! 

Anyways....

Yesterday I had my first class of the quarter: Textile Science!  I loved it!  I feel like I'm actually back in college.  I actually had to take copious notes.   My instructor, Deborah Young, is a great lecturer and she wrote our Swatch Reference Guide book.  The book is very thorough and has helped me already identify fabrics.  There are 200 fabric swatches you have to assemble in the book, but they are all very good quality and so informative.  I highly recommend this reference guide!
Swatch Reference Guide for Fashion Fabrics


In class we also received another textbook.  I haven't really gone through it all that much, but its more scientific than the Swatch Reference:  J.J. Pizzuto's Fabric Science 9th edition


Today I had my first ever pattern drafting class. We drafted a basic skirt block from the measurements of the dressform.  I am sooo excited for prospects of pattern drafting.  Thankfully it is coming very naturally to me.  All you need in the beginning to draft slopers is to follow the directions.  We are using Patternmaking for Fashion Design (5th Edition) by Helen Joseph Armstrong.  I think the book is great, even though I found a few typos already.  Maybe older versions are better.  This book is great because it not only teaches how to draft for industry, but also for individual people (ie. YOU....and most importantly ME!)  I have these pants I designed for my final in Fashion Sketching II that I am dying to make.  I'm definitely going to draft them one of these days!  Do you want to see my sketch?

A brief summary next week on my Computer Grading, Marking, and Cutting class, and Computer Aided Fashion design.