Huge congratulations to Textile Design student, Katie Speake, for winning the Society of Dyers and Colourists competition Midlands Region award this month.
Katie’s project was a consideration of textile design processes that could be used to address period poverty, and was judged the best among competition from Loughborough University, Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham College. The judges stated that Katie had a real grasp of the issue, combined with excellent research, development and clear presentation that addressed the brief fully.
This is the second year in a row that a De Montfort University Textile Design student has won the Midlands regional award of the competition, which is renowned for bringing together students, researchers, industry professionals, and designers from around the world.
As well as being an excellent project, Katie’s success highlights the skills and approaches to design that we foster on the Textile Design course at De Montfort University.
Katie said: “I feel so grateful to win the regional heat of the Society of Dyers and Colourist’s competition ‘creativity in adversity’. My project explored the issues of period poverty and design for period pants. I find designing for an issue or problem in the world inspiring and the feeling of knowing that I have raised a little bit more awareness of this topic feels very important to me. During this project I explored indigo dyeing as an alternative to synthetic dyes and completed a lot of textile testing on my chosen fabrics. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and I had an amazing day taking part in the competition along with meeting other competitors.”
Katie will now go on to compete at the national final in November.
Posted on Thursday 20 March 2025