Textile Design Immersion @ MTL

Joy Alaoui (left) showing students MTL's jacquard looms. 

Graduate students had the opportunity to visit MTL, a high-end jacquard manufacturing company on November 18th. MTL's design director Joy Alaoui, an alumni from the Textile Design graduate program, gave us a tour of their facilities. Students got to learn about the company's design process, from concept creation and exploration to manufacturing.

Textile Design Workshop with Rowan College

Marcia Weiss showing students how to weave on the floor looms. 

On November 11th, students from the Rowan College at Burlington County's Fashion Design program visited our studios to learn more about opportunities in Textile Design. The students got to explore knitting, weaving, and print design hands-on by working on the looms and knitting machines in the studio.

Thanks to Rowan's fashion coordinator Lisa Steinberg for working with us to visit, and for the great photos from an exciting day!

Rowan students picking out yarn to knit and weave with!

Seeing how the Jacquard looms work! 

Students try out knitting on our v-bed machines.

Students learning about computer aided design. 

Rowan student trying out weaving on the floor loom. 

Study Abroad Session for Textile Design Students

Alison Ervin shows off her woven and print work created while she was at Heriot-Watt

On November 10th, the Textile Design undergraduate and graduate students were visited by Study Abroad director Madeline Wilcox to learn about exciting international study opportunities. Two of the main semester-long Textile Design programs are Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, and Massey University in New Zealand. Past students have also studied in places like Rome, Central Saint Martins of London, and many other places throughout the world. Students also learned about shorter study abroad opportunities like summer short courses at Heriot-Watt and PhilaU Nexus Abroad in Europe.

PhilaU students who have studied abroad at in the past talked about their experiences and showed some of their beautiful portfolio work in weaving, knitting, and printing that they completed while abroad. We even got to Skype with two of our students who are currently studying on exchange at Heriot-Watt to hear about how their experience has been so far! Two Scottish students from Heriot-Watt who are currently on exchange with us at PhilaU for the semester shared their opinions about the benefits of experiencing different ways of learning and new ways to work through the design process.

I think it was fair to say that all of the students who have studied abroad said it was one of the most rewarding and exciting experiences for them, and they encouraged all of their peers to consider an study abroad opportunity!

Jess Thies shows off her work done at Heriot-Watt