Ten freshmen and sophomore students at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR) have achieved a remarkable feat: their hand made, tie-dyed garment, “A Flower Bud,” premiered at the International Textile and Apparel Association showcase in St. Louis, Missouri.
The students’ achievement is all the more exceptional because of their grade levels; usually only junior or senior-level work is accepted.
What started as an extra credit assignment in UH Mānoa Professor Shu-Hwa Lin’s fashion, design and merchandising class grew into a semester-long learning experience for the team, led by students Livia Langmade and Ayla Alamedia.
For Langmade, the project was a lesson in garment construction from the first stitch to the last. “I’ve never made a piece like this from scratch before,” she said.
Alamedia, who first joined the project to gain more experience with sewing, learned the value of precision.
“For me, it was details,” Alamedia said. “I realized how important it is to have everything to be precise and to the best you can do it while doing the entire process and how each step of the process matters”.
International student Mana Yano also gained advanced skills, learning “how to carefully sew the dress and how to make a lot of ruffled parts” despite having limited prior experience.
Lin noted that the project provided the students with an integrated design process, pushing their performance “beyond freshman [and] sophomore” expectations and covering steps usually taught in senior classes.
