Week 29 (19/5/25) - (23/5/25)

 By Monday, Harriet hadn't finished my toile, so I decided I'll get it done which is what I did. I spent the lesson with Lareen fixing and finishing my bodice toile while also fixing one of my patterns with the back pieces of the diagonal panel on the front of the bodice. This wasn't hard I just had to remember to take pictures of my progress because I kept getting caught up in my work, but I managed to finish this ready for me to finish it at home.

I couldn't do any work for the group project during the study period because me and my team for the fashion film went out to film videos and take pictures, this took all of the study period and we lost track of time so we came back to college a little bit late to photography but we managed to get a good amount of videos and pictures that I will put together over the half term.

During photography I really cracked down on getting all my pages done. At the beginning of the lesson, I thought I would leave it at 16 pages, however, by the end of the lesson I had 20 which is a number I am comfortable with and I think my layouts are all individual from each other, making each different photoshoot look distinct except for the Bauhaus hat photoshoots since they are both linked to each other. Because I didn't have good images from the rest of my photoshoots, I decided that my last photoshoot based on the word 'inflate' would have two separate spreads because there were two images I preferred over the others. Instead of creating the design to flow with the images with some overlap, I used one side of the page for the image and created a design on the other, I then flipped this for the other page to create some difference.

 

In stretch, it is the beginning of our third project which is to design a mural using words like peace and calm for a charity that want to have one installed in one of their rooms. For this I used my personal knowledge to find out what I personally felt calmed by which was more of a darker and natural idea using things like space and oceans to gather ideas for what I could do. I think I got a good set of images that successfully show my thoughts and ideas. I designed my mood board to fit my ideas, so I didn't just put the images on a plain piece of paper, but I stuck a black piece of paper that fit the paper and placed the mood board on top of that. This meant that when I wrote on it, I needed to use a white pen which I borrowed from a classmate. To finalise my mood board, I did a few drawings and stuck them on the mood board to show my ideas growing from the pictures I had chosen. I think I have managed to achieve a mood board that shows my thoughts and ideas on what would be a good mural design that is calm and peaceful and fit for a large age audience (though mostly teenagers). 

With Sam, we as a group started cutting out the fabrics and we managed to get the blue cut out along with most of the dark grey. However, at the beginning, I stayed in class to finish of the last remaining part of my toile, sewing the side seams together. This means that I know that my toile works completely and can be sure that I can successfully create the garment using my design. After the lesson, we had to clean up so I used the vacuum, though it was a bit of work to deal with since it didn't have much suction, we had to do this because after college there would be an exhibition in the gallery space which is where we were cutting out the different pattern pieces.

Charlie's lesson was left to us to get on with our zine, I spent a good amount of time on the front cover working on messing with how I could lay it out, so the design stood out as much as possible and was readable, but I didn't want it to be too complicated. I then started on some more pages of my zine where I decided to go with a blacker and whiter theme though I might have a couple of images that have colour since colour is an interesting part of both of my garments. 

 

When Wednesday began, I wanted to continue working on the sashiko that I had done the night before, but Harriet asked that it be redone once all the pieces were put together specifically on the bodice section, so I spent my time unpicking that. I decided at the end of the lesson that everyone should at least try and finish their own parts of sashiko because it will take a good long time. Though I am not going to leave them without anything so I think I will show them with a video tutorial on how to create the sashiko as I think if I was to do all of it, I would be spending all of half term on it and our goals as a team is to get our garments done during half term so we have a week to catch up on any missing work and adding to our work to improve our books and folders. While I spent my time unpicking, the rest of the group continued to cut out pieces and we are hoping to finish cutting out things by the end of the week, but I will spend the end of Wednesday and all of Thursday doing sashiko because we need to cut things out as a group. 

I spent all day Thursday creating the sashiko pattern for Harriet's bodice. It was a challenging experience since it was a lot of repetitive work and some of the stitches were hard to sew with my hands, making my hands rough and hurt. I'm sure my hands will hurt a lot more over the half term when I must embroider my patterns, but I have become used to the technique so hopefully it won't be too bad.

During Friday's lesson, we really focused on getting everything cut out ready for us to make our garments over the half term. I helped cut out my pieces out of interfacing and the lining fabric a then moved on to the interfacing where I took all the patterns from everyone and started laying them out on the interfacing and marking out the net pattern. This was probably the most difficult part because the interfacing was curled, and some pieces need it to be cut and made bigger because the width is too small. However, with the help of Jake I managed to complete this and while we didn't cut out all the pieces, we were originally going to cut due to lack of interfacing and seeing that we can just do it with boning. Other than me, everyone in the group was busy cutting out all the pieces so that we can all go and do work with little to no worries.