Jo Kallal and Belinda Orzada

Jo Kallal and Belinda Orzada, consumer studies, noticed students sometimes struggle to perform three-dimensional tasks when all they have are two-dimensional materials to study.

According to Orzada, students have traditionally had problems moving from two-dimensional pictures and textual descriptions to designing in three dimensions. Students in the apparel design classes she and Kallal teach need to be able to work both from drawings and three-dimensional dress forms.

“Our students need to be able to go from a sketch to a formal pattern and to see how a garment really looks—in three dimensions,” Orzada said. They have found digital imaging solutions to both parts of this problem.

As part of their pattern design tutorial, “Vision de la Mode,” they created digital animations to help students see how a completed pattern—one used to actually make a garment—is developed from a sketch of that garment.

They have also begun to work on three-dimensional digital images of garments to help students see how the different parts of a piece of clothing fit together and to see how the fabric actually conforms to the body.

According to Orzada, many of their students “have little clothing construction experience. We wanted to develop a tool that would supplement the flat illustrations and textual descriptions in their textbooks, something that would give the students ‘first exposure’ to what they will be doing in class.”

Working with staff in the PRESENT, Kallal and Orzada stitched together several digital photographs of a garment on a dress form into one three-dimensional digital animation.

Students who view and study this animation are better prepared to manipulate fabrics, patterns and forms during class. “These animations allow us to cut back on the class time we spend on basic lecture and demonstration, allowing us and our students to spend more time working on advanced designs during class.

“The work we are doing is part of an examination of the format of several classes in the curriculum. Our goal here is to improve the students’ spatial visualization skills,” Orzada said.