Read all about it!!

I received a lovely letter in the post from my mum yesterday with a cutting from the Derby Telegraph, which is the local newspaper back home.

People wonder why I don't want to move back to land locked derby, well I think the first sentence sums it up..."sailing swimsuits"... They don't know what a wetsuit is!!

Free time!!

Well as you may have noticed I haven't posted for a while, but this is due to the fact I've been enjoying finishing uni and so spending my time out on the water!! sadly taking pictures while sailing isn't the most practical, so you have to rely on someone else, but thankfully one of the rescue boats took these cracking pictures of me and martin sailing on Sunday!!  It was so much fun!! the wind was only about 18-19 knots but had some mammoth gusts in the high 20's/ early 30's and the pictures are of us flying down wind on one of the gusts!

Brilliant fun!! im loving this year's windiness!! :D

The End of an Era!

Well Friday was my last ever hand in at uni!! I can't believe 3 years is over!! it has gone so quick!! Feels like yesterday I was a 1st year!! Our last hand in was our portfolio, I'm so proud of mine now, after much tweaking! here is a picture of the front page, I don't want to show any more than that on here, but trust me its great!! :D

Here is the front page! The writing is on tracing paper over the colourful stripes of my collection!

UCF Fashion Show 2011

Last night was finally our Uni graduate fashion show in Falmouth. Everyone's collections looked amazing!! I'm so proud of everyone!!! I'm not going to say any more at the moment, as it still hasn't sunk in yet that it is over and I've finished my 3 years at Falmouth already! Here are the pictures of my collection on the catwalk!

Yoga Wear

As I am currently putting my portfolio together it means lots of photo's of stuff I have made is in need of being photographed. I soon realised I never got round to photographing my Yoga wear project I did in my 1st year. I know normally you wouldn't put first year work in your final year portfolio, but I'm still really proud of that project! It was designed to be a multi functional garment that you can walk down the street in before or after a yoga lesson and no-one would notice it as yoga wear, they would just think they were normal clothes, but still allowing for all the movement and stretch required for this activity. The garment can be a pair of trousers, a skirt and a dress all in one!!! I personally don't know where this genius idea came from but I am glad I thought of it!!

As it has been a struggle to get hold of any photographers who were willing to take 20 minutes out of their day to photograph this outfit I decided to shoot it myself. And I think for a literally 20 minute photo shoot, I did quite well and I'm pretty proud of it!!

The garment as trousers

See how much freedom of movement the trousers gives!

The Skirt

The skirt doesn't restrict any movement and also no chance of accidentally flashing anyone!

As a Dress

Holds well and doesn't fall down! also giving the biggest freedom of movement, and I have personally worn this outfit out like this at night, and no-one knew it was a yoga outfit!

A big thank you to my fab model: Beth Spooner!

Final collection photo's

Here it is, final collection is handed in and after much stress i managed ti get a photographer to take some product shots of my suits in the studio!

Mens Full Suit

Womens Full Suit

Mens 3/4 Long John

Womens Long John

Thank you so much to my lovely models: Hannah Bryon-Staples and Oli Start. Many Thanks also to the photographer Rachel Stanley for fitting me in.

Restronguet Asymmetric Open 2011

We began this sailing year at Restronguet Sailing Club without a class captain, which meant no asymmetric open! :( I was quite upset by this, and so I have decided to take up the role and I am getting well into organising an open!! It isn't till September but as most sailors will plan their year of sailing events months in advance I am getting on it straight away!! My graphic designer friend Sarah has already designed the beautiful posters!!

If you sail an asymmetric dinghy and would like to come along please join the Facebook Event Page for all the updates, news and also I will be posting the NOR and SI's on there (when I have written them!)

UCF Fashion Show 2011

Its nearly here! The University College Falmouth graduate Fashion and Performance Sportswear fashion show! I now have all 4 of my wetsuits totally finished and they look ace! (pics to follow soon, but they are locked away in the wardrobe at uni at the moment!)

Hopefully it should be a good show and looks like its going to be a really good turn out, tickets are selling fast already! For more info on the show or how to buy tickets please go to the UCF Fashion Show Facebook page!

Also if anyone fancies being a model for the show, the model casting is on Monday, please find all details on the Model Casting Facebook page

sailing as a kid

Currently I'm in the process of clearing everything off my computer when I stumbled upon the pictures my mum emailed me of me sailing as a kid! some people think I'm joking when I say I've been sailing since I was 3, but it is no lie!!

Helping dad at the age of 3!

This was always my favorite spot on the boat! Glad to say im at the dryer end of the boat these days!!

I can't believe how blonde I was! and I wish I had a pair of those shorts now!!

Dad used to make me a brilliant swing from the main sheet!!

Yes that is my fault that every boats mooring lines are nicely coiled up!! haha!! what a fun game that used to be!!

1st Finished Suit

Hurah!!I have finished my 1st suit (blindstitched and all!) and it looks exactly how I wanted it to! My glueing has definitely improved from last year as there were no holes!!! :D I am a tad gutted that the suit is a little bit short for me, but we aren't supposed to make them for ourselves anyway!!

I am well chuffed!!! Pictures of the other suits soon to come!

More decoration!

I was a bit upset that the engraving didnt work on the pink neoprene because I wasn't engraving very deep (so it didnt weaken the neoprene or the nylon lining)  and so the black rubber didnt show up, so it was back to square one for how to get my triangles onto these panels! I decided to go with vinyl, as i had tried it before in my experimentation and it worked really well. However doing my triangle print in vinyl is rather fiddly!!

This is what the Vinyl sheet looks like once it has been cut into

The next fun step is to peel off all the bits you don't want around the outside!

I then was left with this, but obviously i now need to pick out the insides of all the triangles!

It was quite a lot of triangles!!

The final transfer ready to be heat pressed!

Gutted that it didn't work when heat pressed, it seemed to move and melt abit!

Close up of the mess!

After this failure I was left with one last option!! Dye Sublimation printing! I knew that because the pink lining fabric was Nylon then the Black wouldn't show up much but the engraving on the other panels wasn't the boldest thing ever so I wasn't too fussed!

A heat press disaster!!

 After all that it turned out that my neoprene doesn't like being heat pressed and instead melts!! :( which is possibly why the vinyl didn't work! so now i have decided to stop wasting time and this suit will just have to have no print on it at all!! The print was only ever going to be on the shoulder straps anyway so it is not like it was a massive detail panel!

Sailing Hurts!!

After dinghy sailing this weekend, I am now paying for it!! It was actually pretty windy, and I am now shattered!! My legs were killing me from the lack of hiking I've done in the last 3 months!! and yesterday when I woke up the back of my leg hurt loads, and when I looked in the mirror I was shocked to see the massive bruise up it!! But i guess this just helps to reinforce the reason behind my final collection having a protective bum panel that goes all the way down to the back of the knee! I tried taking a picture, but it didn't come out great! The flash makes it not look as horrific!! :)

For some reason I only had these bruises on the back of one leg!! I must have been hiking harder on one tack to the other!! Sailing again tomorrow night, hopefully i won't batter myself anymore!!!

Getting ready for sailing

The sailing season finally began on sunday, and last week I was preparing by making sure all my kit was properly cleaned. (I had washed it all at the end of the season too, don't worry!) My kit bag zips had ceased and slightly corroded so i put it in the bath to soak, and chucked a few other bits in too, and then I was slightly embarrassed to realise how much Henri Lloyd kit I have.

I honestly don't know why people put metal zippers on a plastic zip, it doesn't stop corrosion happening, and when it is stuff designed for sailing you would have thought someone would realise its not a cleaver idea!! 2 of my zips on my kit bag seem to be permanently stuck and the zip on my wetsuit is starting to rust!!! its bonkers!! if anyone has any answers why companies do this it would be much appreciated!!

Decorating Neoprene!

I haven't posted for a little while due to everything getting a bit manic down here and Blogger hasn't let me log in for 2 weeks! I am currently surrounded by neoprene on my lounge floor as I have decided to glue my suits at home so I can get as much done as possible without being limited to Uni's easter 9-5 opening times! Before I could get to this stage I had to sort out my print patterns. I decided from all my previous experimentation that engraving on the laser cutter was going to be the best option, both for cost and speed of getting it done. Although it still wasn't the quickest thing as one sleeve took an hour and a half to engrave!!

My cool triangle print, although its actually engraved not printed!! you can't tell though!!

The sleeve that took an hour and a half to engrave!!

My Collection all piled up on my lounge floor!! Hard to believe there is four wetsuits there!!

Gul International

A couple of weeks ago I went for an interview at Gul's headquarters in Bodmin for a job as a designer there. I won't hear for a while yet i don't think, but im keeping my fingers firmly crossed as it's my dream job to work there! Anyway, when I arrived I was so scared, but my fear quickly drifted away and I was filled with excitement and happiness just from looking around their reception area! It is filled with loads of amazing surf boards from all different era's! It is so cool! I only took a pic of a few of them because I only had my phone with me and the camera on it isn't great!

The amazing Union Jack board you are greeted with as you enter the building!

Some amazing retro boards all hanging above the reception desk!!

Time to begin!

The sun is shining and the flip flops are out and my neoprene has finally arrived!!! woo hoo! After 4 months of waiting, my neoprene arrived on Friday! It look even better than i could have ever imagined!!!

My final collection is gonna be defiantly eye catching!!! :D

Keep strong Japan!

As we all know Japan is not having a good time at all at the moment, and as James on my course is half Japanese he is showing is encouragement and support through a funky hair doo as well as well as some cool T-Shirt Designs, which can be found on his blog!!

 

Japan we are thinking of you!!!

Virtual regatta

A bit late but it has been a manic week/weekend! Saturday night was the Virtual regatta between local sailing clubs. The clubs involved were, Royal Cornwall, Restronuet, Mylor, Flushing, St Mawes and Fowey. It was a cracking night and the rcaing got a bit intense but that may have been because we (Restronguet) were sat next to RCYC, and for most of the races it was between our 2 teams!! Here are some quick snaps I took, everyone almost looks like they are in a trance staring at the screens!!!

In the end it was RCYC who took 1st place, with us from Restronguet coming 2nd!! Gutted to have missed out on the loverly free Henri Lloyd jackets but as they were XL sizes then I wouldn't have been able to wear it anyway!!!

Wetsuit magic!

Woooo Hooooo! Finished my Neoprene mens wetsuit toile today and apart from having to make one minor alteration to the neck its all good and ready to go!!! If only my neoprene was here!!! Keep fingers crossed!!

Beautifully modeled by Ollie, Many thanks to him in the swelteringly hot studio!!

Only 2 inches to take of this panel to make it fit flush across the shoulders!