Jill Godfrey is a textile designer who specialises in lingerie. She was kind enough to invite me to her home at showed me what she gets up to during her daily life as a textile designer.
Jill has been working has been working for 32 years. She started in 1980 and in 1992 took maternity leave, and worked part-time for a few years. In 1994 she began to work freelance and eventually went back into employment in 2004 until becoming redundant. After 2 years she then went to work at courtaulds in Nottingham.
Now she works for herself again as a freelance designer, often finding she is more of an adivors and misses the creative part slightly. She finds that often young graduates and young designers lack in technical experience and employ her to 'resolve' their designs which they can then use.
One of the main pieces of advise she could give me was to research the market and know your customer. To try and improve technical skills and to get work experience in a larger company.
Jill does the designs on illustrator. To begin she will scan a quick drawing/sketch into the computer and then draw over it in illustrator. Only one side needs to be drawn and then it can be flipped. No exact size is needed because a size guide is given in the technical package.
The technical package is done on excel and is what the manufacturer uses. It will include stitching numbers, history of the design, bill of materials, construction notes, size guides and a mock up of the garment. All of the above needs to be very exact due to oversea manufacture.
It was really interesting to talk to Jill and she allowed me to have a better understanding of design to manufacture work.