Stones and Sea

You cant beat the sea breeze, a sunny sky and vivid colours on a winters day, dog walking, one of my favourite things to do with my pal Boo

'Reflective' Statement

Well to be quite honest when the first mention of the blog came about it was the words I'd been dreading to hear! To have to write about what I was thinking and about what I have been doing is my idea of a nightmare, but now, after finally starting my blog i am enjoying it! 

It sounds a bit cheesy but after a day at uni I quite like being able to come home and reflect on what i've been doing during the day, on what i've learnt and how i thought it went, especially since Ive been learning totally new things like weave and knit! 

My blog has both strengths and weaknesses I think, possibly more weaknesses than strengths at the mo! I find it hard to write about whats in my mind, i'm sure my dyslexia doesn't help me but i've always preferred to hand write things out. And i did this for most of my blog posts, hand wrote them out first before uploading them onto my blog, i don't get much inspiration from a computer screen but I do with a pen and paper! Its a good job i'm not doing an IT degree really! I also find it hard to get the balance between formal and informal writing, sometimes i think am i writing to informally for a blog that possibly the queen could see let alone anyone else! Also getting the right amount of writing to the right amount of pictures, for me i personally i find tones of writing boring so much prefer pictures but to others it could be the opposite, but you cant always please everyone! 

Ive been forever changing the design of my blog too, i just cant seem to get it the way id like, id say colour is my thing, its what I'm good at but on the blog it has been stupidly difficult to get it just the way i like it. So one week it might be one colour with a certain design and the next completely different! In the time to come I'd like to make my blog more personal to me, more personal posts and pictures but i know this will come to me in time. Ive been looking at one particular blog that has been inspiring me; fabricofmylife.co.uk , i just love everything about it, the way the blogger writes and the way she puts her information across in an informative but personal way. I'd like my blog to be inspirational to others and reflect the person I am. But for now, i'm still learning and getting used to having my very own blog :) 

Weave

The technical blocks are over and i had a nice end with weave! something i had never ever done before. Coming to terms with the looms i felt was fairly difficult to begin with but with a bit motivation and endurance i slowly got the hang of it! 

Along side making samples on the looms we had to do a swatch file containing various fabric samples and structures, In order to do this i went to visit Chelsea harbour which i must say is quite a nice 'upper' class place! we went round asking various fabric shops for samples and left with quite a good bag full of samples to look at and experiment with! I enjoying playing around on the looms and using the different structures, some more difficult than others but at times found it quite limiting with what i could do, heres a few i came up with! ( my colour palette also went out the window a bit! ) 

Print!

Print All the way! 

Third technical block was print and i loved it! after having a pretty disastrous week before with stitch it was nice to be doing something i enjoyed! we started our designs from our drawings and went on from there, we had a day on photoshop doing digital print then a day doing screen printing and in the dye lab ( one of new fave places! ). 

Digital print was fairly new even though id done a bit on photoshop during my foundation year was it was good to learn new techniques and get the hang of it a bit more! 

Screen printing was also a joy but a little harder as matching certain colours to our palettes was pretty difficult! Even though there not exact i got there in the end! Dyeing our fabric prints was super cool too, we didn't have long to do this but it was still nice to be able to have a sneak peek into the world of dying! 

Print was defiantly my favourite technical block so far and i nice end to a good first term at Chelsea! :)

Here are a couple of my fabric prints and Digital;

Stitch!

Stitch literally was a bitch! 

My second technical block, and was defiently not my favourite! 

We had to make samples based on your drawings from some of the techniques we had been shown or techniques that we had made ourselves, i found i really struggled with this complete 'openness' of this block. The technique i focused on was layered pieces of fabric, various coloured papers and plastic bags and putting these into the heat press and then experimenting from there, i used the sewing machines to work into some of my samples. i loved experimenting but found it hard to put across my ideas and concepts into the sample.