Course Evaluation Form

“Territories of Practice” – “Textile Innovation”

This year I have taken the elective course “Territories of Practice”. I have decided for the textile innovation course with our tutor Ros Hibbert.

The course consists of four lectures.  The first week was an introduction to the world of textiles. After this lecture, I gained an initial understanding about what textile is and how textiles produded are. I have known about the major types of textiles used in the fashion industry currently. These are cotton, silk, flax, wool, luxury hair fabric, polyester and polyamide.

In the second lecture we extended our knowledge about the textiles beyond the traditional ones. Non-traditional textiles include Bast Fibres, Hemp, Leaf Fibres, Seed Hair Fibres, Peat, Alginate, Metal Fibres, Paper, Man-made Synthetic Polymers, Bio-fibres and Nano-technology. Bast fibres have been traditionally obtained from agriculture.

In the third lecture we discussed new properties and functions of today’s textiles. Technology has advanced greatly in our times and so does the textiles technology. Today’s textiles could have protective properties such as UV protection, fire and spark resistance, antistatic and electromagnetic protection etc.  They could have signalling properties such as reflective properties, chromatic and optical properties. Well-being properties are also very important especially in the area of sports clothing. Desired properties include Easy-care, Comfort and Ease, Aromatic Agents, Antibacterial Properties, Anti-allergenic Properties, Health and Cosmetic Benefits, Biomimetics.

In the last lecture we discussed about some latest developments in the realm of textiles. These are smart and interactive textiles. One example in this area is the scent dress constructed by Dr. Jenny Tillotson. It was to mimic the body’s circulation system. Interactive textiles have been used here to emit a selection of scents which depends on your mood.  Another work is the bubble mood –sensing dress designed from Philips. This dress is capable of glowing with lighting effects and blowing with bubbles in response to the wearer’s emotional state. Emotion such as stress, fear or happiness can cause the dress to change its colour.  These dresses are now experimental and are not available on the markets. But I can envision them to be used by us in our daily lives in the near future.

During this course we are required to write our own blog. The blog shall record the process of the “Textile innovation” lecture, what we learned and what we thought.  In my blog I included the notes of each lecture and recorded what I have learnt in the course and out of class. From the whole lecture, I'm mostly impressed of the interaction textile.

For my presentation I am going to talk about silk. I have researched the manufacturing of silk fabrics, the use of silk, and its new function especially in the medical area.

I found that this course quite useful. It improves my understanding of textiles, and will be very valuable for my future projects. This is because during this course I learned about a lot of new potentially useful materials and their new functions. I cannot wait to practice them in my next project.