In the Gwendolyn Newkirk Human Sciences Building, a group of University of Nebraska–Lincoln students are conquering the world of designing and printing custom textiles, an increasingly growing segment of the textiles and merchandising industry.
The students, mostly juniors and seniors from the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design, are learning a variety of methods — from using graphic design software and on-demand textile printers to the more artisan approach of carving stamps from vinyl to create one-off block printed fabrics.
Michael Burton, assistant professor in textiles, merchandising and fashion design, said the class, Advanced Design for Printed Textiles, builds on and expands many of the concepts the students have learned in past courses.
“We’re pushing what they know about digital design and bringing in new things, like learning how to use laser cutters and utilizing companies like Contrado and Spoonflower (custom on-demand fabric printers),” Burton said.
Burton’s class is one of many across the university stretching the strengths and knowledge of students this semester. Over the 17-week spring semester, university faculty are teaching 3,754 courses, and students are completing about 286,630 credit hours, according to the university’s office of Institutional Effectiveness and Analytics.
The Advanced Design for Printed Textiles class focuses on both analog and digital tools for creating custom textiles, and the class has changed over the years as technology continues to change the industry.
"Pattern design used to be labor-intensive," Burton said. "Now, they’re using digital software to design fabrics instead of the old-school method — drawing everything by hand, tracing and transferring designs with carbon paper, and then painting the patterns. It used to take forever just to create a single design. Now students are picking up new ways to produce very quickly.”
Artificial intelligence has also been incorporated into the course, as many of the tools have AI capabilities that students are learning to harness.
The class is valuable for students who are pursuing textile and apparel design, such as Jaxon Gilner, a senior textiles, merchandising and fashion design major from Olathe, Kansas. She wants to be a designer and is currently completing her capstone fashion capsule.
“I could have incorporated some of these projects into my capstone, but I wanted to broaden my portfolio just a bit more before I graduate,” she said.
Gilner is most looking forward to learning to how to use a laser cutter for fabric design. The students will spend several class periods at Nebraska Innovation Studio to work with the laser cutters. Burton said they can be used to fabricate fabric stencils to create accurate pattern cutouts. They can also be used to engrave graphic art onto fabrics like denim. But it won’t be easy and will likely require some troubleshooting students have never done before.
“One of the big problems they will face is that they'll burn the fabric," Burton said. "So they’ll have to problem solve by fixing design flaws or adjusting the software or the hardware settings."
Aylana Goodwin, a senior textiles, merchandising and fashion design major from Omaha, said she is excited to use machines at Nebraska Innovation Studio but is also looking forward to expanding on some skills she has used before.
“I want to get to screen printing, because I’ve done that before, but I’ve got some new ideas for layering that I want to try to see if it works,” Goodwin said.
