Category Archives: sewing

Social Fabric: Oakland School for the Arts Fashion Show (and campus visit)

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Amy has been nudging me to visit OSA (Oakland School for the Arts) for about a year now.

So a couple weeks agoe, she and I took off in the afternoon to check out their Fashion Design class/program with Linda Riccardi. There was such great energy in the room while we were there as they are getting ready for their annual Fashion Design Show.

I had to laugh as Linda took us around the campus to her classroom. For those of you who aren’t familiar with OSA it is a charter school that is in the same building as the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland. Linda kept apologizing for the size of her room and the mess–I told her I wish I had her space–especially as I saw what she had. Her room is a little larger than Andrew’s (room 45) with a smaller room storeroom attached. The room is set up as a fashion/clothing workroom.

Along one wall are 5 sewing machines and assorted measuring tools.:

 
Brother semi-pro line as used on Project Runway Juniors. Variety of Seamstress rulers and hoops.

 Along another wall are threads and 2 more specialty machines. And around the room are 6-8 professional dress forms.

Another wall had slopers (hand drawn/measured pattern blanks)

In the center of the room are three large cutting tables (on adjustable stands). With students busy at work completing their designs for the upcoming show.

Amy and I were able to take the time to wander around the room and talk to the students about their work, how they developed their ideas, what their backgrounds are like and how many of them are working with Linda for the first, second or third year (the program is only three years old).
Mia’s crocheting to represent Irish Lace
 
Seeing the student’s work and hearing their stories around their collections gave me such ideas for invigorating my curriculum and pushing my students to the next level. Meeting the students, and seeing how Linda pushes these students made me want to do more in my class. Too often I find myself struggling to get the students to produce something that sometimes I am willing to accept anything that comes close to what they are asked for. Now I know that most of the students in my class are not looking to pursue a career in design or fashion, but by lowering the bar for all of them I wonder if I have done them a disservice. As I stood in the room at OSA and talked with these students I started to have all these ideas of how I could redesign the curriculum to better engage the students to get them to that depth point that we want instead of just skimming the surface.
Friday night I was able to attend the OSA Fashion Design Class spring show: Social Fabric
I was blown away with the detail and depth to which some of the students were able to reach with their pieces.
Here are some of my favs:
The student called her collection “ghosts” and played with the idea that ghosts are often tied or bound to earth instead of being able to move on–she also explored the idea that the faces are obscured.
                                    

This student was inspired by his African Heritage and envisioned Africa in the Future–his headdresses were so detailed and had so much color.

This is the finished piece to to one of the earlier photos–this student sewed yarn strand by strand onto clear vinyl to make her designs.

Right now as we wind down this school year–I actually can’t wait for next year to get here to tryo out the new ideas I have for helping my students dive deeper fashion and costume design and how even if they don’t think they can “do art” or “draw”–that they can still develop their and express their creativity through textiles and clothing.

Making a small space work

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“Organized Chaos” is a term that can often be used to describe my Costume & Fashion Class.

At the end of the first Unit, my students rotate through a machine sewing project.

With 18 students and only 4 machines, this often means that students are working on several different projects at one time.

Today there were students sewing on machines, designing patterns, cutting fabric and still other were working on a online assignment on Schoology.

 

 

Students Teaching Students

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This is what I love to see in my classes: students helping and instructing their classmates.

In Graphic Publications, a graduate from the class of 2017 returned for a week to help the new editors settle in. It was great to have Sam in class working with the yearbook editors, Lauren and Grace while I worked on lessons with all the new students.

Im my Costume & Fashion Design class, I had 2 students who joined class after the first, so they needed to do a little catch up. Classmates taught them the skills they needed (separating thread & threading a needle) to catch up on the assignments.