Textbooks and my fall classes

I picked up my textbooks last week in order to avoid the rush at the start of the semester. Between work and trying to enjoy my last few days of freedom I have not had much opportunity to examine the books closely, but I did give them a cursory glance before sticking them on the textbook shelf of my bookcase.

APRL 101 – Intro to Apparel Design & Development
This class is required for all freshmen starting in the apparel design major. Transfer students do not have to take it, but I thought it would be a good idea to take it anyway. The class serves as an introduction to the college experience and to the world of fashion design. I am already quite familiar with the college experience, but I need to learn more about the fashion industry. I enrolled in the intro class in the hope that it will cover all the information that should have been but was not covered last semester in my fashion industry class.
The three books for the class are Fashion: from Concept to Consumer by Gini Stephens Frings, Fashion: the Industry and Its Careers by Michele Granger, and Inside Fashion Design by Sharon Lee Tate. All three are about the industry, so it looks like this class will be what I need. My goal for this class is that by the end of this semester I should be able to choose a concentration within the apparel design major and have a basic understanding of what my career path within the apparel industry will be.

APRL 185 – Apparel Line Development
I know very little about this class. It is required for two of the three apparel design concentrations, and even if I choose the third one I will still benefit from it. I was expecting a business oriented class about how to market and sell a line, but it seems the focus of this class will be line design. I need to purchase a lot of art supplies, and the two textbooks are about fashion drawing.
In addition to fashion magazines and apparel catalogs I will be using Fashion Sketchbook by Bina Abling and Fashion Illustration for Designers by Kathryn Hagen. My drawing skills need a lot of improvement. Hopefully this class will help, but I expect I will be spending a lot of time on homework and that I will often feel quite frustrated.

APRL 250 – Textile Evaluation
This class picks up where last semester’s textiles class ended. Last semester I learned about different types of fabrics; this semester I will learn how to decide if a fabric is good and which fabrics to use for a specific project. As I pick up textbooks I look for ones with a lot of text highlighted. I keep hoping that students who took the class before will help me by telling me what is important. For this class I found a copy of the textbook that was not highlighted, but had a lot of Post-It notes in it. My highlighting strategy has not paid off, so I decided to try the Post-Its.Sara J Kadolph, who wrote the textbook for last semester’s textiles class also wrote this one, Quality Assurance for Textiles and Apparel. Last semester I often thought that textiles was more a science than design class, but after looking at my new book I realize I have barely scratched the surface of textiles science. This will not be an easy class, but it looks interesting and I think I will enjoy it.

APRL 355 – Cut and Sew Knits
This is my only sewing class this semester, and it is the one I am looking forward to most. I enjoy working with knit fabrics, and I was upset that I did not get to do so in last semester’s apparel construction class. I often feel that design programs focus too much on woven fabrics at the expense of knits. Most of the dresses we see on red carpets are weaves, while most of the apparel in Target and Walmart is knits. Learning to design high fashion garments is fun, but I am more interested in learning to make apparel normal people can afford.

Designing and Patternmaking for Stretch Fabrics by Keith Richardson makes me even more excited about this class. It seems that I will be learning not only how to sew knit fabrics but also how to design knit garments.

SPAN 103 – Elementary Spanish I
I am also taking a Spanish class for which I have a textbook, but this blog is about apparel design so I have not included a picture of it. I would rather take Mandarin or Cantonese, but Stout does not offer any Chinese languages.

Notebooks, folders, textbooks, and a computer

My classes begin Monday. This is my last weekend with nothing to do. I could spend it in a productive manner by sewing something, but I probably won’t. I plan to take advantage of these last few days free from obligations by sitting on my sofa watching movies and eating cheesy poofs.

Yesterday I picked up supplies for the semester: notebooks, folders, textbooks, and a new computer. Students at my school do not need to purchase their textbooks; the school has a textbook rental program. A $5.22 fee is added to the cost of each credit to cover the cost of books. Students pick up the books required for their classes at the start of the semester, and return them after the semester is over. Books a student wishes to keep can be purchased at reduced prices. I far prefer renting books to purchasing them. In the past I would spend a few hundred dollars each semester on books. The only thing I needed to buy this semester was the fabric swatch kit for my textiles class.

In addition to the textbook rental fee, a laptop rental fee is also added to tuition. Students get a new computer every two years. I already had a computer, so I am not sure what I will do with my new one. The fee is not optional, so now I have two computers. My music, photos, and other documents are on my old computer. The new computer has some good graphics programs that I will probably need in future semesters, but for now I plan to continue using my old one.

Click here for more information about UW-Stout’s textbook rental system or here for information about laptop rental.

Following is a list of the textbooks I received and my thoughts about them. I have not yet read the books, so these are not reviews, just my initial impressions.

APRL 145 – Interior Decorating/Design Textiles

- Kadolph, Sara J. Textiles. Upper Saddle Rivers, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. 2007.

This looks like a good book. I need to memorize a lot for this class, and this book will make it easier. There are a lot of pictures and table. A list of key terms can be found at the end of every chapter along with some discussion questions. Furthermore every chapter ends with a suggested reading list that includes page numbers which will make any additional research I have to do a lot easier.

- Textile Fabric Consultants, Inc. Basic Swatch Kit. Smyrna, TN: 2008.

It is a swatch kit. I have never had a swatch kit before so I have nothing to compare it to. The swatches are bound together with a rubber band, and a warning label on the package warns me to not remove the rubber band lest I get the swatches out of their proper order. Without such a dire warning I probably would have removed it. The plastic bag already tore, but I was planning to make a snazzy new bag anyway. Sixty dollars seems a lot to pay for some scraps of fabric, but it is the only book I had to buy so I can’t complain.


APRL 166 – Apparel Construction

- Brackelsberg, Phyllis and Marshall, Ruth. Unit Method of Clothing Construction. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. 1999.

This book is intended to be used as a textbook. I think it will be a very useful tool, and I may purchase it at the end of the semester.

- Reader’s Digest. New Complete Guide to Sewing. Montreal: The Reader’s Digest Association. 2002.

I already owned a copy of this book. It was my textbook last semester at MCTC, and I was not surprised to learn I would be using it again. The book is intended for home sewers, but it is still quite useful as a textbook.


APRL 274 – Fashion Industry

- Johnson, Maurice J. and Moore, Evelyn C. Apparel Product Development. Upper Saddle Rivers, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 2001.

I was hoping to see The Teen Vogue Handbook on the required list for this class, but I suppose Apparel Product Development is more appropriate for use as a textbook. The first edition of this book was titled So You Want to Work in the Fashion Business: A Practical Look at Apparel Product Development and Global Manufacturing. This book seems to provide a detailed and impartial view of the fashion industry. Hopefully by the end of this class I will have a better idea of what exactly it is I wish to do in the industry.


PKG 100 – Packaging and Society

- Hine, Thomas. The Total Package. Toronto: Little, Brown & Company. 1995.

I do not know what this class will be about, so I started reading the book. The book seems to be about the way manufactures package their products for sale. The book is interesting, but I find it difficult to read. I feel it is poorly written, and I am not sure it is an appropriate textbook. The author states facts and refers to studies, but never cites the source of the information.


SOC110 - Introductory Sociology

- Ferris, Kerry and Stein, Jill. The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2008.

The title says it all, this is an introductory sociology textbook. I am not too excited about sociology, but the book is filled with big colorful interesting pictures, so maybe the text will be interesting too.

- Goodwin, Jeff and Jasper, James M., ed. The Contexts Reader. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2008.

This book is a collection of articles from Contexts, a magazine from the American Sociological Association intended to introduce sociological research and perspectives to non specialists. I think sociology articles written for non sociologists will be easier to read than ones written for sociologists.