Cassiefairy ~ the Fashion Designer?! Creating My Own T-shirt Collection…

I’ve been rather excited this week because a little secret work project is finally coming to fruition and I’ve been bursting to share it with you! I’ve had to keep it on the down-low for a while but now it’s in progress I am free to tell you all about it! I was recently asked to design a collection of ‘Cassiefairy t-shirts’ by Got-The-T-Shirt.co.uk. I know - SO exciting, right?! I never thought that a little bit of blogging work would take me into the realms of (technically!) fashion designer so after a few moments of surprise, shock and sheer terror that I wouldn’t be good enough to do it, I accepted the offer and got to work. I spent a few days coming up with ideas and a bit of a moodboard for the t-shirt designs, which helped me to go from ‘no clue’ to ‘hmm, I’m getting an idea!’. I knew I wanted the t-shirts to be plain, white, simple and fresh but I wanted to put my own stamp on it – the essence of “Cassiefairy”. But what did that mean? Even, I didn’t know! I started with the things I love, which are rainbow colours and inspirational quotes and attempted to incorporate these elements into my designs.

I started off by jotting down some quotes and messages. I like to think I came up with them myself, but who knows how they popped up in my brain in the first place! The quotes I wanted to use are ‘just love’, ‘choose to use your wings’, ‘follow your excitement’ and ‘believe in your dreams’. Some that I’ve got on standby include ‘it’s playtime’, ‘live a life you’re proud of’, ‘don’t grow up’ and a few more, but I think I’ve chosen the right words for the collection. I chose a couple of font options – hand-drawn and scribbly or blocky capitals – so that I could choose which looked best for each quote. I love Spriograph – you remember the geometric drawing tool from childhood? – so I wanted to include a repeating pattern, lots of circles, swirls and scribbles. I played around with some patterns and tried out a rainbow of colours to imitate the effect I used to create with the Spirograph. All of this ‘playing’ resulted in some curvy cuddly shapes, such as clouds, hearts and twirly scribbles trailing off. I especially enjoyed it when I began repeating the shape into a multi-coloured pattern and knew I’d found my design. I tried out each of the designs in a variety of colours – the joy of computer-aided design, eh? It’s great to have the ability to switch up the colours of a design in just a few clicks! The two effects I loved were a bright rainbow of colours and the same rainbow in pastel shades. When I decided to do a three-pattern repeat of the shapes, this lent itself nicely to working with the CYMK printing colour model so I chose a hot pink, turquoise blue and bright yellow for the lines. I also tried this out in a pastel version, and it was very hard to decide between the two… After a lot of editing and playing around with size, I was finally happy with my final selections. I uploaded my designs using the t-shirt designer software on Got-The-T-Shirt.co.uk and submitted my work. I am delighted to have a t-shirt ‘collection’ in process and soon the articles themselves will winging their way to me in the post. When they arrive I will share photos of the t-shirts so you can see how the designs turned out – in fact, I’m bursting to see them myself! I’m also planning to giveaway one of each design to my lovely readers in a competition, so watch this space to get your hands on one of the first ever Cassiefairy t-shirt designs!

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Categories: Creative projects, Thrifty Fashion | Tags: colours, Design, fashion, ideas, pattern, T-shirt, thrifty, trend, tshirt printing | Permalink.

Author: Cassie Fairy

Cassiefairy blogs about everything she does & anything that inspires her; popular culture, film, art, fashion, recipes, craft and design.