On Wednesday 24th November we welcomed fashion designer Sasha Jackson into school to run a pattern cutting workshop with our sixth form Textiles students.

Sasha runs her own label under the name Sasha Starlight and prides herself on creating hand-made one-off garments that are intended as ‘forever’ pieces. Beautifully crafted with kaleidoscopic digital prints and unusual silhouettes, she actively encourages age inclusivity by styling and photographing her pieces across generations. With her clever pattern cutting techniques she also embraces multiple body shapes by making garments that can be adjusted across dress sizes and that will evolve with the client’s changing body shape, further reinforcing her ethos of sustainability and buying clothes to last. 

During the workshop Sasha introduced the students to the key principles of working with pattern blocks. Once they had learnt how to trace and draft a basic pattern block to a specific size, she taught them how to adapt and manipulate the patterns to realise their own designs. This involved removing and inserting darts, splitting the patterns into multiple sections, adding more volume in parts and recalculating body measurements. The process required precision, the ability to visualise 3-dimensional forms and considerably more maths than the students had anticipated!

The workshop was a great way for students to start making steps towards their final collections that they will showcase in this year’s Fashion Show in February. Having spent this term gathering visuals, developing ideas, and experimenting with print and fabric surfaces, it is exciting to see how their concepts will translate into finished garments. Working with a pattern-cutting expert has allowed the students to produce more innovative pattern blocks that will undoubtedly translate into more ambitious outcomes.

Huge thanks to Sasha for such a successful and exciting day!