Charlotte De Bisschop
Senior Technician
Garment Construction
I am a senior technician in garment construction, in the garment technical team. I have many years’ experience working in the fashion industry, this includes running my own business, creating individual, made to measure pieces, specialising in bridal and evening wear. I moved to France and during my time there I set up my business again, not only creating as before, but also designing and making costumes for theatre and dance. I also worked with an interior designer, learning upholstery and soft furnishing techniques. It is during this time I began to design and make bags and garments using upcycling, leftover fabric and deadstock
When I first started working full time at Nottingham School of Art & Design I noticed the amount of steps I would walk in a typical day and I was intrigued to know the kind of distances we walked in the fashion studios. To find out, I began tracking my steps using Strava, out of interest. Strava generated maps of my routes, tracking varying distances according to how busy the studios were. It created an interesting, scribbly, overlapping line. It is these maps, that I am basing my exhibition pieces around. I chose a few days, of differing distances and used various methods of machine embroidery, quilting and sewing techniques to represent the maps and the distances walked. I would like to thank Abi Smith, Embroidery Senior Technician, who created two digitally embroidered pieces that are included as part of the final exhibition pieces.