San Marcos Design Retreat

We had a wonderful group of ladies join us for our Cochenille Design Retreat.

On Thursday Susan and I tag teamed it and taught a quick Garment Designer from beginning to end type work shop, Showing where all the menu's where what you used them for and then took some measurements. We work through the step by step on how to create a pattern for sewing or knitting and how to print, cut paste and tile the pages for sewing and how to read the Shaping instructions for knitting.

On Friday Susan put together a Day of Exploration in San Diego.

We started with Spirit of the Cloth - They have wonderful fabrics, Vintage fabric, Kimonos, Vintage Fabric, Cambodian, Japanese and Thai Silk. I loved the way she cut a piece of fabric, she finds a thread, pulls and follows it across the fabric and then cuts at her line. This insures the fabric is square and you don't have to loose fabric as you try to straighten yourself. It takes time, but definitely a lost art.




Then visited:

Lost City Beads

Shepherdess

The retreat participants picked up yarn and beads and lots of cool stuff to use for there accessories!

Those were all in the general area of Old Town San Diego.

We then traveled over to Carol Gardyne Boutique a wonderful shop in the Little Italy area of San Diego. She creates some wonderful Hand Painted Silk Scarves.




We then changed gears and visited the Quilt Visions Gallery and the Mingei International Museam.




Both had wonderful eye candy - color, history, fabric and inspiration.

Saturday Susan taught how to pattern draft by hand and with Garment Designer - Hats, Belts and bags.

The paticipants worked hard, had there hands full of projects and idea's.

Sunday Linda Medina showed us the many ways to embellish our Hats, Belts and Bags.








Here are a few of the decoupage books that the participants made for themselves to make notes about all the different things they learned at the retreat.



We had a wonderful time hosting such wonderful ladies, Thank you all for coming. We look forward to next years retreats, keep an eye on our events page for dates and locations, or email me info@cochenille.com to sign up for our monthly email news.

~Sonia Barton~

Garment Designer Retreat, New Mexico

A few weeks ago, eleven Garment Designer users met up in Santa Fe and Cimarron, New Mexico. We had four great days together, the last three were spent working with Garment Designer. The retreat took place at Casa del Gavilan, a hundred-year-old inn.

Here is our group... both serious and not so serious.

One of the projects embarked on, was the copying of ready-to-wear. Here you can see Rebecca wearing a top everyone fell in love with.

Below, you see the muslin, made after creating the pattern in Garment Designer. A shawl collar was the focal point of the garment.



Maybe we can get some of the retreat girls to upload the final tops they made. Ladies!!

The last night, we had dinner out 'in town', and met a few of the locals.
Maureen..

and Susan...

Carlsbad Cochenille Design Retreat

Every year Cochenille Design Studio and Susan Lazear host a Design retreat. This year we will be back at the Carlsbad Inn Beach Resort, wonderful place. They gave us a room rate that is almost half there usual rate.



It will be September 10th to the 12th, 2010, If you have the weekend free and will need to relax after getting the school year started again. Join Us!

Day 1 Field Trip: San Diego Area Friday, Sept. 10th
Meet at 9:30 a.m. This day will involve exploring various studios, galleries and shops to get inspiration, and to pick up goodies (if you desire) to use in your projects. We will visit an assortment of the following: • Wearable Artist Studios• Fabric and Trim stores • Yarn Store(s) • Other related and inspiring venues

We did this 4 years ago and it was great, there were about 15 ladies and we visited so many local artist and great Art places in San Diego, that I didn't even know we had in the area! I look forward to driving around town with a good group of ladies.

Day 2 Accessory Design Susan Lazear Saturday, Sept. 11th
On this day, you will learn some of the basics of designing accessory items. In the a.m., Susan will show you how to draft patterns by hand or by computer (using Garment Designer) for purses, totes, hats, non-traditional scarves etc. She will also teach you the art of draping a contoured belt on a body. After lunch, students will choose one or two accessory items, and create patterns for these to use the following day.

Susan Lazear is a Professor of Fashion at Mesa College in San Diego. She teaches fashion courses in- cluding Patternmaking, Draping, and Textiles. Susan designs wearable art, and is a computer graphic artist. In addition to her teaching she writes books and articles for creative audiences. She combines her skills in the development of a line of software for the textile arts, developed under the Cochenille Design Studio name.

I learned a lot of what I know from her wonderful classes at San Diego Mesa College. You do not need to be an expert and because Susan is teaching Design principles you can apply them to either sewing or knitting. You don't have to own our software everything she does on the computer you will show you how to do it by hand. Plus you don't have to be an expert all projects will be step by step from start to finish!

Day 3 Construct and Embellish Linda Medina Sunday, Sept. 12th
Linda Medina will teach you various methods of constructing and embel- lishing (whether knit or sewn) accessory items. You will be exposed to a variety of techniques, and may choose which ones to incorporate into your project. In addition, you will be encouraged to make samples of multiple techniques so that you can later pull from them to develop further projects.

Linda Medina is an artist and designer. She has made custom and one-of-a-kind clothing and accessories for many years,and teaches needlework, sewing and knitting. Her knitwear designs have been in all of the major knitting magazines and many books. She introduced a line of knit and crochet patterns under “Medina Originals” in 2009 and plans to add cross stitch and nee- dlepoint designs in 2010. Linda’s work is included in the International Friendship Tapestry in Iceland, private collections, and is in the permanent collection of the White House.

These two wonderful ladies are ready and willing to show you how to make some wonderful accessories and how to make them stand out.

If you have any questions or you want to Register or just would like more information. Call me: Sonia 858-259-1698 Mon - Thurs 9:30 to 4 PST.

Past Retreat Post