Week 3 (23/9/24 - 29/9/24)

 This Monday started with Lareen, during the lessons I produced a blind hem (and failed quite a bit) and bias tape. The blind hem was hard because I first accidentally used the wrong stitch on the machine (Bernina 1008 - stitch 6) which caused there to be a visible hem. I then tried it again with the correct stitch (Bernina 1008 - stitch 3) with the correct foot: #5 and the stitch width was too small, and the stitches couldn't catch onto the 'fold' of the fabric, so I increased the stitch width from 3 to 3.5 and it managed to work. Bias tape is a challenging thing to make, you must cut on the bias (a 45° angle) and connect the different strips together to create a long continuous strip of fabric. You then must meticulously fold the strip in half and then both sides to the centre of that fold and iron it down. This was a chaotic lesson, but I learnt some important skills. Lareen also took in our folders to have a look over of the work we had done so far.

After lunch I had my self-directed study session in which I finished off my blog for the week prior and published it.

Last lesson of the day was photography with Calvin, where we photographed ping pong balls in interesting places and compositions and edited some of them. We spent an hour doing that and it was interesting to see what I could use when taking my pictures. The second half of the lesson was spent in the darkroom where we did some test strips and then continued to make photograms with different interesting unnatural and natural objects. I think this session in the dark room went worse compared to my previous lesson because I had quite a few attempts not really show on the paper. I have one more session in the dark room and will try to make up for the mistakes I made this time. We also got our folders back from Lareen.

After college, I completed my bias binding work. During this time, I also had to re-iron the bias binding wince it had become quite loose and deformed from the ironed look it had earlier on in the day.

 

Tuesday started off with stretch where I completed mind maps, carried out some research on Stella McCartney and produced a presentation in a group about our specific subject (fashion). The mind maps were simple, all I had to do was to consider different avenues I could take for my Poster For work and different questions I might have to research areas I'm interested in. The research on Stella McCartney was enjoyable because it was research into an important figure in the sustainable fashion industry and really opened my eyes to her dedication to her goals and morals. She has worked wherever she can to make her products as sustainable and cruelty free as possible. The presentation was a bit nerve wracking since I'm not used to talking in front of a group of people and educating them on something. In our group we split up our presentation into 4 where each of us would discuss one topic from this list: Collage, Embroidery, Garment Design and Fashion Photography. I was tasked with presenting the fashion design topic and I created multiple pages explaining each part Garment/ fashion design in detail.

After lunch was my fashion/ textiles class with Sam where we did mono printing of still lives. Monoprinting is interesting because you can press down on the page with a variety of different pressures and that with affect the amount of water-based ink gets transferred to the page. I used a variety of different mediums to draw on the backside of the page to transfer the ink and I used some of the methods I used before in my still lives to see what effects I would get. Some were harder to do since I wouldn't use a medium that would show (i.e., pencil or pen) but mediums that wouldn't (scissors, blunt part of a paintbrush, etc.) so it was difficult to see where i had used the mediums before and some of my attempts came out only slightly more clear than if I didn't look at the page when I was drawing.

I had Charlie for the last lesson in computing where we were introduced to software we would be using throughout our time at college (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) and had an introduction to photoshop. This was a simple and easy lesson for me since i have been using photoshop since year 10 for my GCSE photography lessons. In the lesson, while using photography we were tasked with creating a collage of the different seasons and that was the last thing we did for the day.

After college, I worked on some of my work for Lareen which included researching and creating a page on piping. I also finished my page on the blind hem.

 

On Wednesday, Lareen taught us about garment blocks, patterning and labelling. We created our own skirt blocks from the provided ones in the class to ensure we all had our own things. We then wrote notes on different types of skirts and different things you need to include in labelling patterns, seam allowance, notches and drill holes, pleats, gathering, folds, grain direction, etc. This took up the entire single lesson and was easy to understand.

The last few hours in college consisted of group and individual tutorials in which I wrote my blog for the first half of my week and considered different work experience I could take in Easter since it needs to be sent off to be approved by November.

After college I started my work for Lareen's lesson which consisted of drawing different types of skirts and doing some history on a few of the skirts. I didn't get all of it finished but from what I did do, I think I found a decent amount of skirts and I wrote about a few of them.

Thursday was spent completing work for Lareen's class, taking pictures of a red balloon in a corner and starting some visual recording of fruits and veg. Most of my time was spent completing Lareen's work where I finished off writing up the history of a few of the skirts and went onto writing up what we learnt in class about pattern blocks and labelling a pattern.

The rest of my day, other than taking a few pictures of a red balloon, consisted of drawing, painting, colouring, and photographing fruit and veg. I did do this task mainly using photography because that is what I am most comfortable with and I felt I could really capture the detail in the fruit and veg.

Friday started with Sam in fashion/ textiles where we made textures on A5 paper using different things like paper, rice, sand, seeds, beans, etc. This was fun and messy while also being hard to keep some of the material on the page. We used PVA glue so I coated most of the seeds, etc. with it to try and keep the things on the paper. During this lesson we got our homework which I started  when I got home. Part of it was to visually record our topics (I chose fruit & veg, plants and fish) I had already started the fruit and veg so I continued with that.

However, I got distracted when talking with my dad and I didn't really get much work done so I had to continue with my work on the weekend.

On Saturday, I went out to get some more fruit and veg to draw and spent my day completing that part of my sketchbook. This was alright but my time management is still making me suffer from not completing my work so I only had a little bit finished by the end of the night.

Sunday is the last day of the week so I finished off my fruit and veg work and spent the afternoon in the garden centre taking visual recordings of plants and fish. This was very fun because it was interesting just to walk around all the different plants along with staring at the fish and looking at all the different patterns on the fish.

When I got home I collected all my pictures and screenshotted some of the frames of videos I had taken so I could print them off to put in my sketchbook. I then took some more pictures of the red balloon for photography and edited some of my best ones. I then printed off some of the Ping-Pong ball pictures I had edited on Monday along with the edited balloon photos and stuck them in to evaluate them in my sketchbook.