Her Cloth Creations Increased Multifold

The skills Judy Williams would need as a textile designer were learned in her mother’s sewing room. In the hands of her mother and her aunt, Velma and Alma, a knitting needle, tatting shuttle or crochet hook turned yarn, lace or thread into a beautiful dress, tablecloth or sweater.

“These were women whose hands were never idle,” says Williams. As a child, she fashioned outfits for her handmade dolls while her mother, aunt and grandmother sewed, crocheted, knitted or embroidered.

As a textile designer at Patagonia, Williams’ work is similar to her mother’s. But the tools she uses for the Ventura-based company are straight out of the Computer Age. Ten years ago, Williams often spent days--even weeks--hand-drawing an elaborate design for a proposed line of clothing. Now a Silicon Graphics computer helps Williams create her designs.

With a pressure-sensitive pen and data tablet, she sketches a pineapple. In the click of a mouse, her screen is filled with a dozen pineapples. After a few keystrokes, the pineapples appear in a dozen different shapes, colors and sizes.

Using software designed for the apparel industry, she pastes her pineapple on a plain white shirt worn by a model on her computer screen. Click. The model is covered with miniature pineapples. Click. The pineapples now appear orange and yellow.

To give the shirt texture, Williams covers it with a fluorescent green grid. This computer-aided design technology gives the shirt shadows and lights. The software is so fine-tuned, the model looks as if he is wearing a wrinkled blue cotton shirt with a pineapple pattern.

“Designers are not only more productive but also more creative when they use computer-aided technology,” says Alison Grudier, the owner of FabriCad, a Philadelphia-based computer consulting firm for the fashion industry. Grudier estimates that 30% to 40% of the fashion industry has adopted computer design technology. She expects that percentage to double within the next five years.

“Imagine how much time it would take to color each bloom by hand,” says Williams, unfurling an intricate sketch of lupine, California poppies and wild grasses. “When it takes days to draw and then color a single design, you pick safer colors and combinations. The technology allows us to be that much more daring.”

Environmental advantages are another plus for technology. “There is less waste,” says Lu Setnicka, a Patagonia spokeswoman. “The computer-generated samples are so vivid, we don’t have to expend resources to manufacture samples of every proposed color or design.”

Patagonia designs and distributes outdoor gear for ice climbing, backpacking, kayaking, biking and sailing. The company’s annual revenue is $158 million and its products, says Setnicka, have a reputation for being able to withstand the harshest weather conditions.

“Technology has made our designs much more creative,” says Williams, in part because it has freed her and other designers from the mundane tasks of sketching and resketching a design.

“In the past, I might have submitted a design in four colors,” she says. “Now I’ll propose the same design in dozens of colors.”

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BIO BOX

Name: Judy Williams

Job: Textile designer

Employer: Patagonia

Home: Santa Barbara

Education: Master’s degree in textiles from UC Davis, 1975

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Gali Kronenberg is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to The Times. He can be reached at gali.kronenberg@latimes.com