My Design Journey: Chavon Livey

 Introducing yet another Print School Student we're proud of. Chavon Livey has taken the skills she learned in our Photoshop for Fabric Design: Illustration course, and turned them into an inspiring slow fashion start-up. Read about her work below! 

I have always been drawn to print fabric. I just think it is so beautiful, and can be so unique

and really make a piece of clothing shine. I have my own slow fashion brand, Simply Mayd, and the pieces themselves have very simple shapes so I really wanted the fabric to stand out. To be 'compliment-stopping' to a stranger in the street. 

I loved learning textiles at school as the design process is so intricate, and I think it just makes designing clothes feel more complete when the fabric is your own too.

I played around a bit at the start of this print design

trying water colors, gouache paints and digital. In the end I found what worked best for me was to sketch my elements in black and white – not worrying about color – but just focusing on the shape and textures I could create with my pen. 

I had already decided on a color palette, it just felt more natural for me to do one thing at a time, rather than color and shape together. Then using Adobe Photoshop I colou\red my elements and bought it all to life as I pieced the motif together. At the start I really didn’t know how I would structure it and Adobe Photoshop gave me the freedom to play around and try different things. 

Taking each part of the process separately helped take the overwhelm out of the blank paper so to speak.

It can be easy to get distracted by other artwork and styles, but the best thing to do is just switch off from that and enjoy the process.

Get into a space that inspires you, capture your own reference images and just let the work flow. It’s ok for the first sketch to just be about freeing up your movement and doesn’t need to make the final motif. 

As well as when I decided to break up the steps, it just suited the way my brain worked best, and really helped me enjoy the process. 

I feel I am still so open to what I might create next, that I don’t have a permanent style that will stick with across different clothing ranges.

But my first design was very loose and flowy, almost like those sketching warm up activities where you never lift your pen. I just find it an enjoyable way to draw, as you can’t make a mistake!  

Color is also really important to me and creating unique color palettes is really enjoyable for me. 

Simply Mayd is about fashion so slow you have to make it.

My clothing designs are simple and come with ready-to-sew kits for people who might not have sewn before. So, the fabric is what stands out. The print design really elevates the pieces, and with the color palette gives people such a wide range to style the item with what they already own.  

I love The Print School because...

No steps are missed, I feel like I am walked through each element so nicely, and I can pause and rewind whenever I need a little reminder. 

The fabric design course range is so expansive that I knew it would have exactly what I am looking for when I realised my current skill level didn’t match my vision.  

It's so great to share and see other designer's work in the Facebook community. It’s a great mix of styles and levels.  

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