Textile Designers- Converting Fantasies into Realties

We all love to have beautifully designed fabrics for our garments, home furnishings and other accessories. Have you ever thought, how these fabrics get their design? Who is behind creating the innovative textile designs? And how much effort goes into making a fabric which we might reject in just a few minutes? Do you know the textile designers and their creative but very complex work of textile designing?

Textile Designs- The Vision of Textile Designers
Textile design is the process of making designs for knitted, woven or printed fabrics. It is a technical process which includes both- surface design and structural design of a textile.
Textile designer must have knowledge of yarn making, weaving, knitting, dyeing, finishing processes, as also of different types of looms, knitting machines, and printing processes. He conceptualizes new and innovative designs, creates sets of design samples, experiments with color, fabric & texture and finally designs fabrics as per the prevailing fashion trends.

Creation of Textile Design
The Textile designer makes a sketch of the finished design envisioned by him. His sound technical knowledge of production and the properties of fibers, yarns, and dyes help him in visualizing the final textile product. Earlier, drawings of woven textile patterns were made onto special graph paper called point papers. Weavers used these drawings for setting up their looms for producing the fabric. However, today, the professional textile designers use some or the other kind of computer-aided design software for the purpose. The modern CAD/CAM technology helps in easy creation of virtually any kind of weave and design, helps simulate the created weave or design into the virtual fabric in different color combinations even before the fabric is manufactured.

Textile Designers
There are two basic fields in textile designing- fabrics for home furnishings; and for clothing & other textile accessories. The textile designers make creative, stylish and contemporary designs as per the market demands. They also keep regional, historical and cultural factors while creating these designs. They can work as one of many professionals- freelance designer, in-house designer, stylist, color specialists, curator, printing supervisors or managers.
The textiles designed by these designers only go to make fashion clothing that fashion designers offer you along with the home furnishings, textile accessories and other textile products.