Most of us think of clothing designers as fashion forward thinking individuals. Today, you're going to meet clothing designers who thought of safety before runway style. Please welcome Annie, Natalie and Maggie, who are from a team from the University of Wisconsin-Stout who designed an evacuation harness for wheelchair bound people. Welcome.
All
Thank you. It's a treat to have you here because you're seniors from my alma mater. I received a press release about this class that you were in and the great design that you created. Annie, tell me a little bit about this class. Yeah, I like to think of it more of like a problem solving type of skill. You're thinking outside of the box doing more research on things and getting a better understanding of, I guess like finding something that needs improvement and improving lives on it. In apparel design. Natalie, tell us about the evacuation harness. We treated a device that could really help someone evacuate from a building whether it's around stairs and things like that. We did a lot of research on 9/11 so that really led our design development in that direction. I know you design clothes, as well but this is a unique thing. Maggie, this design when completed there were five on your team? Mm-hmm. Tell me and our viewers, also about the area where this was submitted because you won an award. Yes, we submitted it to the IFAI for our competition. It's nationally recognized. We won Second Place. It's for safety design. Mm-hmm. What were some of the pitfalls, Annie that you had when working with five and sewing and designing, when working with this project? Communication.
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All
I mean, that's the most important part so if you don't have that right then it makes it really difficult whether it's planning when you're going to meet or when you're going to have everyone on the same page. I think we did a really good job especially with advances in technology and getting aware of everything. Natalie, what type of fabrics are in this harness? We used a lot of narrow fabrics, so straps, like you find on backpacks and stuff like that. We tried to mainly create it out of that. Maggie, how many did you make? It must have been interesting working together on this. Yeah, I'm trying to think. We made at least five prototypes, I think. We started from muslin and then we eventually got to like a backpack. So, did you use an industrial sewing machine or just a regular sewing machine? We used a home sewing machine, which was interesting.
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You have to go through all those layers. I was lucky, I didn't have to do the sewing. So who did the sewing? We worked on some of it. We split up our project into parts. So you tested this out on people who are bound to a wheelchair and it works well. What have you learned most from this design process? It was a really good team learning experience. Absolutely. Because we worked so much together. It was a lot of time together a whole semester together, we were in one group. I think that's the biggest thing to take away. Sometimes, sewing projects and quilting projects take a semester length, maybe longer. We don't have such great results in that short of time. So, when you're thinking about-- You're fashion forward, which you are you're going to graduate soon, what would you like to do?
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All
Tough question. You do a lot of exploring in school then for your last semester, you kind of like choose what direction you want to take it. Right now, I have a pretty diverse portfolio but we'll see where the next semester takes me. Maybe you think working on this project will help you secure a job? Definitely. I think the teamwork that is involved was incredibly helpful. I know, Natalie, it's kind of like what we do. It's a teamwork job on Sewing with Nancy. It's a teamwork job sometimes people work together on quilts or other projects so this is just a new area. Well, thank you for being with us today and doing so well on your award that you received for your evacuation harness. It's well designed, I hope this gets manufactured soon. Thank you so much If you'd like to read more about the design that these gals made you can go to nancyzieman.com where all things Sewing with Nancy are found. Under Nancy's Corner, you can click and find out more information. You can also re-watch 52 of the most current Sewing with Nancy programs and connect to us by social media. I hope you've enjoyed this second program of our three-part series on "Fearless Quilting Finishes." We'll be back next time with our final program working with the binding. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.
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