Week Fourteen

This entry is slightly more of a day entry then a week as I have got to send off my work so that it is printed in time. I am having my journal entries put into a book. I have been adding in the pages for a while now, it takes quite a long time to get it looking good but I am really pleased with it. It is sort of a project diary. Well, anyway, so far this very short week, as today is only Tuesday, I have finished another file. One of the files is to look at the next five years and plan where it is we would like to be at the end of it. Next year I will be in Nottingham. Well I think I will be! But I am pretty much set now on going there. I have been offered a place on their one-year top up course, which is called International Fashion Business. It looks a really interesting course. I like that at the end of it, past students have got all different jobs out of it. Some have become stylists, some work as retail managers, some are working in buying and merchandising roles and some have gone on to do postgraduate study. The plan we have written isn’t set in stone but it has got me thinking about where it is I would like to be. Five years seems such a long time, but I have been at Newcastle College now for four years and it has gone so fast. For the five-year plan I looked at doing an MA course at Nottingham after I have graduated with my full degree. If you stay on at Nottingham to do an MA, you can apply for some money to help with the costs. Without this I am not sure I could afford to do it unless I did it part time over two years and worked as well. After this I would like to go on and work for a company. This would be at a junior level. At the minute I am not sure what this would be doing. There are so many jobs that sound interesting, but until I have done the course, and learnt new things I am not sure where it is I want to be. Whatever it is I want to work my way up and become successful. The fashion industry is always changing, and so many of the jobs you need to work you way up, start from the bottom gaining experience to move forward. I think if you ever got board there would be room to switch and change. There is just over a week left now until the hand in day. I need to complete my practical work, which is to make some more dresses. I need to have another tutorial with a lecturer to see what is going with my garments at the exhibition else I am not sure how to complete my work. I have got a lot of different things I could include in the show so I want to make sure I choose the right things. I like my photographs of my samples, but I am not sure whether they go with the white paper of the dresses. I also need to sort out what rail it is I am having in the exhibition and find some good quality hangers. Hopefully it will be done on time!

Week Thirteen

This week I think I have fitted quite a lot into the time. I have managed to get two paper dresses made for the show. I don’t think they are brilliant, but I haven’t got much time at all, and so many things have changed with my exhibition plans, that if I have a show it will be a miracle. I thought I was going to make three dresses, but now I think I will have five, so I only need to make two more which shouldn’t take much time. They look a bit boring on their own, just being white paper, I am not sure whether to use some brown paper, or some other materials with them. I could print onto them but I am worried this would take up a lot of my time as the stencils I used before to sample, took a while to cut out. For some samples I made some stencils out of paper, cutting out shapes using a craft knife, and then used ink on the heat press and printed onto fabrics and papers. The paper samples came out better then the fabric as the colours stayed nice. Sometimes when you print, the inks change colour due to the fibres in the fabric. If I have enough time, and have got the dresses made to fall back on I could print up some paper and make about two more dresses and see how they look. Then I could choose the best ones out of all of them for the exhibition. I want to put some labels and tags onto the garments to make them look like they are on a shop rail. I made some out of wire mesh, photographs and papers and they look quite good. I need to add sum text onto them, maybe using some acetate and layering this up with the other materials. The tags look good but I am not sure yet how well they work with the dresses. With the dresses being all white, and the tags brown and copper colours, I am not sure if it looks right. Maybe once I make some more garments using different papers it will match in better. I have put the paper dresses on a clothes rail for the moment while they are being made to hopefully stop them getting ruined, I want them on a rail for the exhibition but the one I have got looks a bit flimsy. This has helped me to work out how many garments I need though, and what type of rail will work. I think that five garments will work best. Four of them are not enough, and six too much. Amy had a look at my rail with some of my images blown up from the photocopier behind, to try and work out what would work for the exhibition. I said to Amy how I want to have a shop window display feel to the show, and not just some paper dresses on a rail. She told me to mock up some ideas to see what we will need. I’m not sure what it is I need to turn it into a shop window display. I want it to look interesting, and have a fine art feel. A display that is about fashion, but not necessarily something you can wear or buy. I will have to do some research and draw up some more ideas and have another talk with the lecturers, but this has helped me to see how it’s looking. Last time I had an exhibition tutorial and Noel looked through my work, he wanted to see some of my illustrations blown up to see whether they worked large scale. I printed some off on A3 paper to stick them up and see how they looked. I stuck them up in two different ways to see how I could have them printed. With big gaps in-between, and some close together. I’m not sure whether I like them or not when they are blown up. My illustrations are small, but blown up I am worried you can see mistakes in them. Amy thinks they look good but I am not too sure. I have got some other images, photographs or drawings, so I think I need to see what else could work for the exhibition. This week I have also got my yellow and purple file completed. The yellow file is to look back through our old journals and see how much we have learnt over the course. I looked through some of my journals and have re-reflected on them, I noticed that I didn’t write much about things and could have explained more about a lot of things, so hopefully I do this now. I think that when I am writing the journals though I tend to do them quite quick and chatty and forget to say everything as I think everyone already knows what it is I have been doing. I forget that someone reading my journal may have just picked it up for the first time. My purple file is about setting up a fashion business. I decided to look into how I would go about doing this, and planned what type of things it is I would need to do. I looked into funding, training and planning. There are a lot more different things that you need to learn about to do with business. I didn’t realise how many different things there are to deal with then planning to start up. I have written the report to go with it and just need this to be checked over to check it is containing the right information. I am glad these two files are out of the way so that I have got time to do the others. I need to start the blue file, which is a five-year plan, and then add some more information to the green one, which is planning the exhibition. On Wednesday, I had an interview at Salford University for the third year of their Fashion course. This was a waste of time. They have only ever taken on one person into the third year and she was from Central St Martins (which means she was good!) I am not sure why they ask people for an interview if they don’t take people on in different years. They asked me if I would go into a lower year, and I said that I wouldn’t go below year two. But really in my head I new I wouldn’t even do this. I have been offered a place on a one-year course at Nottingham Trent, which looks really good so I wouldn’t do two years somewhere else. They were a bit rude about my work, and I wasn’t too pleased with their attitude, as they had asked me there for an interview when really there was no point. They said my portfolio was very unusual, and they said that they didn’t know what work was mine and what wasn’t. I am not sure what they meant about this but everything in my portfolio is my own work, I have got research of other people work in files and sketchbooks, but that is to go alongside my own to show what has influenced me. Nottingham seemed a lot more impressed with my work, so I think even if they had offered me third year I would have gone to Nottingham, as they seemed much nicer. They asked me about second year, but I don’t think I was giving out much of a good vibe, as by then I felt they didn’t want me so we just sort of agreed that I wouldn’t go there. It was probably a good thing that I went to the interview though, as it is experience. I felt as though they were criticising my work, but then they said how they would definitely have me on first year, but wasn’t sure about second just due to the fact that by second year you need to do either styling, or fashion and the woman said she wasn’t sure which I was. She said if in the second year you did both I would defiantly be able to do it. This is where I could have said a lot more and let them know what it is I am good at and why they should have me, but I just didn’t feel strongly enough that that’s where I wanted to go. Which is strange, as I have wanted to get into Salford for the last three years!

Week Twelve

I had an exhibition tutorial with Amy and Noel to discusse what I could do for the final show. I asked them to see me as soon as they could, as there was not time for everyone to be seen in one day. I have been working on some garments, which I wanted to be hung up for the show. I thought that if I stiffened them and hung them from the shoulder they would fall and make an interesting shape rather then just having a dress on a mannequin. I needed to get their advice as soon as I could so that I could finish the garments depending on what was happening for the show. If I needed them to be modelled I would need a zip. If they weren’t being hung they wouldn’t need stiffening. I showed Noel through my work that I had with me and he suggested a lot of different things. He asked why I hadn’t made my garments out of metal, but with my making skills and time limit it just wasn’t possible. He suggested that I made them using something other then fabric such as using lino flooring. I wasn’t too keen on this idea. Although I like looking at different materials and find them interesting, I don’t really enjoy working with them. Samples are my limit with anything other then fabric! Going away from looking at what I could do from my garments for a bit, Noel loved some of my illustrations and illustrator technical drawings. I did some small illustrations in a line in my portfolio and didn’t think much of them. I am not very confident about my drawing skills. As a series I think they work well. But I am not sure about having one or two on their own. I am going to blow some of them up and see what they would look like in my exhibition. They may look better then I expect when they are enlarged. I will try the photocopier and I can try the smart board and a laptop to project the images. I can photograph this on the smart board to use in my file. Noel also suggested that they go on a slide show like a fashion show. I could have this somewhere away from my garments so that I have got my exhibition spread around. My illustrator images are some technical drawings that I did to go in my portfolio. I did them to show how my shapes from samples could turn into a garment. On a sheet repeated, or laid out together, they look good as a set. Almost like wallpaper. This could also work well behind my garments as a backdrop. I don’t think anyone else would have this so it would look different. I have got a lot of different aspects to my work and it is hard to choose one, because then I feel like I’m not showing everything I have done. I did some mood board type sheets that I sent off to Northern Design Competition, because Noel hasn’t been in a lot he wasn’t up to date with my work so I showed him what I had done and he thought that maybe I could do some kind of mood board as my back drop. Something else we discussed was to do a photo shoot with my garments once they are complete. I have got some research on a shop window display, which is very similar to my work. It has some twisted shapes running around the mannequins. This could be re created using Photoshop and it could become part of my photo shoot. It would be hard to make full scale to be in the actual shoot but I could make a small set up and photograph it and then mock it up creating new images. I could also project shapes onto the garments creating interesting patterns, this could be mocked up on Photoshop. There are a lot of different ideas that we spoke about but what I need to do first of all is to complete the garments that I have started, and then photograph them. I can then see what these are like and decide what to use. I am also going to blow up my illustrations to see how these turn out. I have got the work. It is just deciding what is going to be in the show. I went home and started to finish my garments. I needed to iron in some interfacing, add zips and then stitch the hems into place. This would or should have worked fine. But the iron I had decided to keep leaking out water, which stained one of my dresses! I thought that when the water dried it wouldn’t show up on the fabric but it stained. So I don’t want to use these now for the show, I feel as though they are nowhere near good enough. I felt really disheartened, and confused about what I was going to end up with for my show. On Wednesday I had talk with Andrea about what I could do. She said that she thought the fabric cheapened the designs in a way, and I should use something different like wire or paper. I showed her my work, and she said the illustrator work which I did over Easter is the strongest work I have done in a long time. I have done shop designs, and a file on a business I would like as well as a file on how the garments should be made. After looking at what I had done, we both thought it would be a good idea to make a series of paper garments on a shop rail, like a shop window display. A visual look. One paper garment wouldn’t look good enough but a series shows art rather then a dress. I could have tags and labels hanging from them with my shop name on, and these can be made using papers and wire mesh like some samples which I have stapled into my sketchbook. If I have time I can print up some papers using stencils like I did some sampling off to add detail to the dresses. Small sections on each dress with flashes of pattern and colour could make them more interesting. I hope I have got enough time to get this all made. I will also need to find some clothes hangers. They need to be good quality expensive looking hangers. Not plastic ones. I will also need to find a clothes rail from somewhere. I could do with borrowing one from a shop because they are expensive to buy. Lots of work to get done!

Week Eleven

Over Easter I had been designing on illustrator and have come up with some good designs which I am really pleased with. I haven’t used illustrator before so I think that I have done well to get the designs looking so professional. I showed the lecturers what I had done over the holidays and asked if they thought it would be possible to make one. I had tried over the holidays using fabric and card to see how it would work but had no luck. The card didn’t bend in the places it needed to and ended up looking old. I haven’t got time to do a lot of experimenting, what I need to end up with needs to be the first thing I try. There are only five weeks left till the deadline and I still have a lot of written work that needs to be done. I sat down with Janet and went through some possible methods that I could use to create the garments. We went through all different types of materials such as foam, card, paper, stiffened fabrics and even what I used to begin with, metals. Foam would be a good material but because I haven’t got time to get to grips with it testing out different ways, I don’t feel confident about using it. I have tried card and it was too think, and creased in the wrong places, paper would be better as it is smoother, and can bend and curve. I don’t want to use metal mesh and wires like my sample, as I am worried that it wouldn’t look good enough. I am not very good at using those types of materials and prefer to use fabrics. I like to do my samples in different things as I like structure and form, but I would find it hard to make a whole collection. I showed Janet some designs that were by Calvin Klein, spring/summer 2009. This collection contained garments, which were structural in shape, but they hadn’t been stiffened to stay the way they were cut. The folds fell down loosely draping. With the talk with Janet I decided this was the way to go. It would be much simpler then having to test out different materials. It is a material I am familiar with, I have my designs, and can come up with something interesting. I went to the fabric shop that afternoon and got some cheep cream fabric to use to mock up a garment. I thought it would be good to pin together a dress, and then use the shapes from this as my pattern when I am using the actual material for the garment. This would save me making mistakes using expensive fabrics. While I was at the fabric shop I also got some samples of fabrics that I could use, and some samples of interfacing so that I could test out what worked for if any sections of the dress needed stiffening. I spent the rest of the week making two garments. I did test ones using cream fabric and then I went back to the fabric shop to get some nicer material, and then used this to make the garments. I stitched the sections that I could, and left one side open, for if I needed to iron any interfacing inside. I would like to have the garments hanging up at the show from the shoulder, so that they fall to create an interesting shape and they create a more sculptural piece rather then a dress on a mannequin.