Traditional Hand Embroidery and Simple Hand-Woven Structures as Decorative Crafts for Garment Manufacturing

This study explores a field of textile craft, which incorporates the techniques of traditional hand embroidery design and a simple hand woven structure into construction processes of garment production to enhance the fortunes of the local fashion industry in Ghana.  It  was  mainly  a  studio  based  project  which  involved  the  use  of  experimental  and  descriptive  methods  to  explore  the possibilities of designing and construction of the weave and embroidery structures. The project was designed to have traditional and  cultural  significance,  so  as  to  provide  a  new  dimension  to  local  garment  decorating  processes.  The results of the study revealed a wide possibility of creating and fashioning various simple hand woven structures of traditional significance into the production of garments.  This provides innovative ways of actualizing new creative ideas for the progress of the local industry. The experiment revealed that with careful blending of yarns of various types, colours and sizes, very attractive and significant results  can  be  achieved  making  it  appropriate  for  use  in  garment  decoration.  The basic challenges encountered involved the variations in yarn sizes used, the long floats associated with some weave and embroidery styles and the limitations associated with the weave frame used for the project. These shortcomings can be considered for further studies in the field to improve on the performance of the techniques. In general terms, however, this study has proven that various designing techniques can be incorporated into garment product through mix-media techniques exploited in the project.

Keywords: Traditional   hand   embroidery,   hand   woven   structure,   creativity,   textile   craft,   Decoration and   Garment manufacturing