week 7 (21/10/24) - (27/10/24)

 During the weekend I had drawn and cut my pattern pieces for my A-line skirt ready to be made on Monday.

Creating the A-line skirt was a little bit less hard when compared to the pencil skirt, the main reason for this was that there were less components. I think creating the A-line skirt was a fun and engaging process because I was able to grasp what I needed to do to get to a certain point and achieve an outcome.

I was a bit confused when I only had to overlock the sides but as the process of making the skirt went on, I realised more and more why it wasn't needed. I was the most nervous about creating the concealed zip, but having a demonstration from Lareen helped me understand and I managed to sew a (proudly) great concealed zip especially when it was my first time doing a concealed zip. The rest of the process of making the skirt was a mix of good and confusing. The facing was a bit awkward for me to understand (bagging it out and under stitching) because there was a method of bagging out that I had never done before so I had to see Lareen go through it twice to be able to understand what she was talking about and under stitching was a new process to me.

the final part of making the skirt was doing a small double turned hem (1.5cm SA) which I did at home, the hem was a bit small and one of the side seams didn't line up that well so I had to tuck it in a bit more in some areas. At some points this made my hem a few mm (1-2) larger. In the future I think I need to be a bit more careful when making and cutting out the patterns as I believe that is the source of my problem this time around.

 

Photography was a fun and interactive lesson where we were split into two groups (one photographing and the other writing for one lesson each) I took photographs with the first group and our goal was to create patterns using coloured lights and plinths. I went last in the group and a tried my best by moving the plinths and changing the angles that I took from so I could get all different types of patterns trying to make it look like I wasn't photographing plinths. I think this was a successful lesson and I managed to capture many different interesting angles and effects from the plinths.

 

 

Tuesday began in stretch where we were set to experiment with different mediums on a design that we liked most from our 3 more developed designs. I used oil pastels, brush markers, soft pastels and biro to experiment with the different outcomes. I have concluded that I like my original use of watercolour in my developed design the most, but I am open to using multiple mediums if I feel like the effect of the medium (i.e., texture, colour, etc.) would work well for a specific aspect of the design. I probably won’t use oil or soft pastels if only because they are quite thick and if I used them anywhere on my design it would be on the flowers, which are relatively small in comparison to the entire design. I think the most likely use of mediums other than watercolour would be brush marker or fabric.

 

Sam's lesson was a bit less chaotic than some of the previous lessons since the first project has finally been finished and we have just started to move on to the second one. During this lesson we experimented with mood boards, learning what the best was to create a mood board is by fist doing it wrong, which I think was the best way to go about it since it helped me to understand a lot more about my ideas for the wrapping paper (the reason why we did a mood board) rather than just being told this this and this which wouldn't give me a very well explained understanding of what makes a mood board good. (readability and clarity). I produced 2 different mood boards in the lesson, the first was more of a collage of ideas where it was a bit repetitive and information heavy and the second one was better made with 7 images that clearly show my ideas for my wrapping paper. However, I think I could improve it a little bit more by laying it out just slightly differently.

 

Charlie's class was quite informative, going through all the different aspects of image distortion and healing tools, giving examples and showing us how to work non-destructively with destructive tools. I found this class fun because we could try out doing one and messing about creating weird outcomes, removing teeth and eyes and the like. The main part was spent completing another one using the tools but trying to 'clean up' the image. We could choose how we went about this, so I chose to clean up wrinkle and smile lines along with a little bit of her hair to make her look more youthful. I think my outcome came out well and the last part was us messing around with adjustment layers to finish it off which I think I used well to give a 'young girl in autumn' vibe that the picture gave off.

 

At home I decided to catch up with all my Lareen work creating pages for patterns and diaries of making, etc. This was alright since I just took the process that I used to complete the pencil skirt section in my sketchbook and applied it to the A-line skirt. I feel like I need to make my diaries more about my feelings and my thoughts on different parts so I will keep that in mind for future projects. Luckily completing all the work for my A-line skirt (leaving places for me to insert my evaluations of both the pencil and A-line skirt) I was able to have just enough space in my folder to fit everything in before all the spaces were used up.

 

 

Wednesday began with Lareen where we spent the lesson going through different types of fabrics and fibres along with processes that are used in industry (especially with jeans, aka. distressing). I found the lesson very informative because we went through all the different ways you can identify a fabric from (i.e., burning, microscope, looking, does it fray, etc.). I was able to learn multiple things and improve my knowledge. I need to keep all these things in mind when I make clothes in the future because trying to be sustainable is an important thing to consider while trying to keep the clothing as durable and long lasting as possible.