Week Eleven!

Monday: New brief today: Manifestos! I have nooooo idea how on Earth I'm going to write my own manifesto. At first, I didn't even know what a manifesto was! It's a pretty open project, so I have a feeling it'll take me a while to think up some ideas of what to base this one on. The scariest thing is that we have to design a minimum of 100 outfits throughout this project, I don't think I've done that many designs so far in my life! I'm quite excited about how I basically get to rule this project with my own ideas right from the start, so hopefully I'm going to really enjoy it.
Tuesday: We were supposed to have a talk with Jamie about CV's today, but I'm pretty worried about the deadline for our Pattern Cutting and Construction units, so I decided to spend the day working on those. I've had a look through my folders and found that I've got a few bits missing, which has got me all of a panic now, I'm just hoping I'll be finished on time.
Wednesday: Private study day, I've been doing a whole load of bits. Mainly focusing on the pattern cutting folder, which is now complete apart from labelling the working sketches, and then I've done a little bit more for the construction folder, like re-doing a couple of my previous samples.
Thursday: The pressure is well and truly on. Quite a few of the other people on the course have now finished all the work they needed to do, so I'm getting quite worked up about the fact I could've been finished now. I am pretty much finished, thankfully. I've finished the shirt now, I think it came out quite well, but I made a mistake with the button holes, so I have lines of yellow chalk in the wrong place which has spoilt it a little as I couldn't wash it off. I'm pretty pleased with how far we've come, at the start when we found out we were making a shirt pretty much by ourselves, I was really worried, but working through it I realised it's not as bad as it seems, I guess I know more than I thought.
Friday: Spent all of last night making sure both books are 100% finished, now they've both been handed in. It's quite a while before we find out our marks, but I'm just glad to be done with them. They're all complete and now I don't have to worry anymore. Definately going to use the Christmas Holidays for a bit of relaxing.

Week Ten.

Monday: Trip to Somerset House in London. One of my favorite artworks shown was the video when we first entered the exhibition which was by Nick Night, where he pulled an outfit to shreads and covered it in paint and stuff. The expression in it was really interesting. I think the best bit about this exhibition was the photoshoot that we could watch. The room was closed off and we had windows we could watch through, where there were photographers from ID magazine taking photos for future magazine articles. It was incredible being able to see what the photographers do, how the models act and react and how the photos are edited.
The rest of the day was quite poorly organised in my opinion, as we were left as Somerset House to go off and do whatever for the rest of the afternoon. We ended up finding our way to the V&A museum to look at the fashion on show there, which, even though I've seen it all before, it's still nice to go back and look at things I may not have noticed before.
Overall, I don't think I personally got much out of this day.
Tuesday: Our debate on Eco-Fashion. I'm not much of a public speaker, so I spent most of the day worrying about participating in the debate. I had prepared a sheet of paper with some facts to bring up in the debate, but found out that morning a few others got their facts from the same sites, which worried me. Fortunately, the debate went really well. I don't think I managed to express many of my points, but I think that as a group we all worked together quite well.
Wednesday: First deadline, for illustrator. It seems like we've not really done all that much, and yet I've done all the work we were supposed to do. Looking back, I realise I have learnt quite a bit, but I'm quite pleased to be rid of it now.
Thursday: Cut out the shirt pieces today and started putting it all together. Got as far as the darts in the front and back of the panels. It's pretty scary getting on with something that I'm not being helped through. I know what I'm doing so far, but I worried about making big mistakes.
Friday: Yep, made a big mistake. Printed the interfacing onto the wrong side of the facing. Uni were also out of the fabric we were using, so I got a bit paniced for a while, but I found a bit of extra fabric luckily, so fixing the problem was quite easy. I got a bit behind, but I should be able to catch up alright in the end.

Week NINE?!

Monday: Felt like today was pretty pointless to be honest. The work I did, I might as well have done at home. Couldn't do any work for the presentation as I couldn't find a working printer anywhereee and I didn't really want to have to do the work on computer. I know I'm being a bit grumbley, but I wanted to do it my own way and couldn't, so I was in a bit of a sulk today.
Wednesday: Lesson in illustrator, good job I've kept up with all my work, we've got a deadline next week! We weren't actually told any sooner than this (which would have been nice) so it was a bit of a shock. I think I'm up to date with everything luckily, but I'm probably going to go through it all and make some improvements on the pieces I'm going to submit.
Thursday: I was notttt looking forward to today. Pattern cutting is not my strongest point, and we were attempting making a whole shirt pattern alone today. I was worried, to say the least. Saying that, I think it actually turned out ok in the end. I think I understood where I was going all the way through, until I'd finished the pattern and had to walk around the pieces and my collar was about 2cm bigger than it was supposed to be! I couldn't figure out what I'd done, so needed a bit of help understanding, but I figured it out and (after two attempts!) managed to get a perfectly fitting pattern. I'm actually quite surprised at how much I've learnt in the past three months.
Friday: Today we continued with our shorts. I really enjoy our construction lessons, even if I end up spending half the time unpicking! I feel like the mistakes I make are silly little ones, that I shouldn't be doing anymore, and yet I just keep doing it! Luckily, I must be pretty speedy because I spent most of the day catching up, but by the end of it I was one of the first finished. I'm really impressed with my shorts, but I feel like I need to put a popper or a hook and eye above the fly-zip because it looks as though if the shorts were being worn, that the top would pull away slightly and not look straight. I might consider this after being marked though, as I would rather submit it in the way that we made it in class.

Week Eightttt.

Monday: We started off the lesson spliting groups, our half worked on some working drawings. We've already done a few for our pattern cutting unit, but this time we looked at some ready-drawn working drawings to see what things you could do wrong in a drawing that would have effect if you were to send a drawing off for production. It's amazing how much can be interpretted wrongly! The next part of the lesson involved charcol... which I'm not overally fond of. We had some fabric scraps that we had to draw from, trying to get the right texture. I don't think it started off to great but I definately improved, I really like the drawings I ended up with.
Tuesday: Catchup session today, for all our IT stuff! I didn't have too much to catch up on, as I've pretty much kept up with the IT stuff, but I did have a few questions. I did, however have a lot of my blog to sort out, I can safely say I am now all caught up!

Wednesday: Illustration - blending objects together to end up with a gradient between a number of objects. I made a mistake trying to blend a couple of separate objects together - I just ended up with a huge mess! We also had a go at making shapes into 3D objects, which I didn't really understand for a while but now that I get it, I think it's a really handy tool to use! I also had a bit of spare time at the end of the lesson and tired using a bunch of these techniques to come up with a random design, which I think has come out really funky!
Thursday: Pattern cutting, this time collars! Our last demonstration, which scares me a bit as next week we're making a patter for a shirt, all by ourselves! But I feel as though I've learnt a lot so (hopefully!) I'll be alright with it, I thought the collars went quite well, but I completely messed one up and had to re-draw it a few times... I had a headache by the end of the day!

Week SEVEN.

Monday: Today we continued with the Melting Pot project. To start off with we learnt to draw models. To be honest, I'm not that great with proportions... and it really shows in the first stages of my drawing, but as the morning went on, I picked up a bit and I actually think what I ended up with was alright. I know I need to expand on what I've done, but I think with a bit of practice I will do really well with these drawings. The rest of the day I concentrated more on the project itself and tried to do a bit more researching. I have now found a few designers, who I hadn't heard of before which I think will be really relevent with theme for this project.
Tuesday: In this session we concentrated on our presentation skills. In a few weeks we need to have produced a presentation on one of the fashion capitals so we spen the lesson playing around with different techniques you can use in powerpoint. I started up creating a presentation on Vivienne Westwood. I tried to be really technical with it, I didn't want it to be too boring, but I think I tried too hard 'cause I didn't have many slides finished by the end of the lesson!
Wednesday: Peclers presentation today! Peclers is a fashion forecasting company in Paris, we had someone come in and tell all of the fashion students about the way they look forward to the future and predict what are going to be big trends over the next year. In the presentations there were 'stories' which involved different themes for trends. Each story started out with an explanation of what the trend would acheive, what colours, what accesories would be used, how the trend was influenced etc. I felt like I learnt quite a lot about how to look forward at trends.
Thursday: Between the last time I had construction and this lesson I had to join the facing pieces together, finish the invisible zip and sew the side seems of my skirt together. In this lesson, our aim was to attatch the facing to the skirt and put in a hem. Annoyingly, I didn't catch the hem properly and had to unpick and overlock it all over again, which I didn't have time to finish in this lesson. Once we'd done the skirt, we started a pair of shorts. We were given the pieces already cut out so we didn't need a pattern at all, we jumped straight in with a fly-zip. After the invisible-zip on the skirt, I wasn't as worried about this zip and I just decided to go along with it.
Friday: Catchup day, managed to finish the skirt! I am really pleased with my skirt, it functions all very well and looks just great! It's a shame I used red thread on it, but I know it's easier to see.

Week Sixxx,

Monday: Got a new project brief today: Melting Pot. It's based on different cultures, mixing some together. At the moment, I like the idea of mosaics. I'm looking into Roman and Greek fashion trends, new and old, and what is on the catwalks at the moment which could relate to my idea. In the lesson we also had a look at some artworks which could relate. I didn't find any that particularly related to Roman or Greek fashion, but I did find one which was beautiful and I think I can still work it into my project.
Tuesday: In illustrator we chose a trainer and had to trace around it with the pen tool. When we had a full tracing we had to experiment how to change the colours of the trainer. I tried a few with colours from the colour palette, but I also used a few images that I got from the internet and made some swatches which used colour and patterns. I really enjoyed this task and I think it'll come in handy in the future.
Wednesday: Continued working on logos and advertisement from previous lesson. I'm not sure I really like this task, I don't really know how to make an advertisement and it's not really interesting me anymore. However, I am happy with how the piece of work has ended up so far and though I know there are things I could do to make it better, I am happy with how it looks.
Thursday: In pattern cutting we learnt to make an ordinary sleeve piece into a puffy sleeve, by adding more fabric into the shoulder and cuff. If I were to make the sleeve, it would involve a lot of gathering. I think this would be really good to add onto a garment that is fairly plain, and add a bit of oomph. We also learnt how to put button holes onto a garment. There's no guessing about it, there are numbers involved, and unfortunately for me, I'm no good with maths! All I remember is that it's something to do with pi... good job I have my book to use as a reference!
Friday: Back to construction, we got our a-line skirt pattern out and started making it. For this skirt we have to put in an invisible zip, which was the task we worked hard on in this lesson. I'm not really a fan of zips... don't know what it is, I'm just scared of them. I'm actually really pleased with how well my zip came out though, which I think has made me more confident now. In this lesson we also worked on some stuff about interfacing. I've used interfacing before, but I never knew how many types there were! I've definately learnt a lot more about what types you use for what and where...

Weeeeek Five!

Monday: A day out in London! I really enjoyed this day, partly because I was a bit closer to home, but mostly because it was something I'd never got to do before. We started off in Shepard's Bush, looking in a few of the little fabric shops there, and gathering a few samples. We saw all sorts of fabrics in these stores as none of them were specialist stores. The fabrics were also fairly cheap fabrics, some of them really nice though! We then moved onto Oxford Street. Amazingly enough we managed to stay out of all the lovely stores and stuck to the fabric stores! We were supposed to be in groups, but me and Celia stuck as a two as it was much easier to go around the stores and ask for fabrics. I think we managed to get around most of the fabric stores. Some of the people were really helpful and we saw a lot of amazing fabrics. Unfortunately, a lot of them were quite expensive, but I will definately be bearing these stores in mind for future designing.
Tuesday: We had a look at designing flats in illustrator in this lesson. I followed well and I understand how to draw half a garment, reflect them and join them together, so I will find it easy to do this in the future. Jamie also gave us a template for some stitching techniques and zips etc. When we made our t-shirt we had to put binding along the neckline and the stitching along the hems, which at first I struggled with, but I now know where I went wrong with it and I've sorted out my problem!
Wednesday: Today we were asked to design a logo for a store, trace around a design and start to work these into an magazine advertisement. I managed to do a basic, but effective logo, and start my design, but not get any further.
Thursday: Finally a chance to carry on with construction! We continued with the bodice we were making, adding the binding to the neckline and attatching the sleeves to the armholes. I got this finished and I am so pleased with it. Ok, so it's not the best thing I've ever made, but I'm really pleased that I've managed to sucessfully make one! First garment I've made in a while, yayyy!
Friday: A catch-up session today, I mainly worked on my seams that we did in our first construction lesson. Looking back, I did a pretty poor job, so I figured there was definately room for improvement! I am pleased with how they've come out now, even though I did have to do a few of them more than once!