tunnel

Now I'm playing and re-photographing my drawing to develop my design for embroidery. It's so fun, and I'm excited to photoshop them!

gray scale

There are my B&W drawings..

New school even changed my drawing style :) I haven't used photocopier much before,  but this time I found it useful, and applied it for few of my drawings.

For the last project, I used colour in this stage, but for this project, I cannot waste time on painting and trying out colours, so I'm going to stick with gray scale drawing, and try colour out with Photoshop that I can spend more time on sampling and material exploration.

stitches

I learnt 10 stitches today!

There are few of them..

peacock inspiration

My work desk is now filled with photos..

Recently I started working on colour.

I decided to pick up colour from peacock feather which is often used for Romanian traditional hat (usually for men).

hmm

Here are few of my primary research drawings below. In the first week I wasn't really sure how or what I draw but didn't want to spend time on doing nothing, so just played with texture and shapes by drawing from my research photos.

They are successful as brainstorming myself, but quite random in terms of colour, and they are varied in quality.

At my tutorial, I was suggested to work in the same way as I did in the last term, because there's obviously not enough time to challenge in a completely new method of creating patterns when I consider about making three garments before the deadline.
So, the successful thing from what I did last term is to make an interesting composition by combining a couple of (or sometimes three) photos together. I'd never liked collage until last term, but now collage became one of my essential skills. I'm surprised about this fact, and happy with it at the same time.

At the moment, my interest is in broken things—or some images which have similar kind of patterns within. I don't know and am even scared of what kind of lace patterns are going to be produced after few weeks.

bubbles

I have been excited to do this after I thought of this idea and I did it today—bubbling!

Well, our new project is fashion show which is one of the biggest event in our course. The theme of it is 'lace' that is one of my favorite materials. I feel I'm so fortunate to get this theme for this great event, it must be challenging but exciting to working on lacy textiles especially for embroiderers.
Not as usual, we got another theme too. This is for the silhouette of garments and colour, then each discipline has got a theme country/region to working on. Inuit for fashion, Africa for print, Peru and Ecuador for knit, Palestine for weave and Romania for embroidery.

First 2 weeks are going to be spent on research (and research drawings), so I have been doing research on both lace and Romania. I can say I'm enjoying researching although there's fear about upcoming weeks towards the fashion show. This is still not the time in harry, be patient.
About Romania, it's quite difficult in terms of colour, because they mostly use white and red for their traditional costumes, so my colour palette is also becoming the combination of white and some sort of red??—NO! it's too boring!! or I should find exciting colour matching from this limited options?

I decided not to do much about colour for this stage, and to concentrate on shapes, patterns and texture. I got a few pictures of cracked concrete as my research photos, and started drawing from them. This is just a very beginning of the project.

NEW year, NEW term and NEW building

New term has started, and now we have our new GSA building. I'm feeling so lucky that I get in the new building while I'm studying GSA, though I'm sure the old one was also good. Our new studio has wood desks and chairs with the back (not stools)!! The environment is just perfect as the building it self is so inspiring, it is like a wonderland. The obvious thing is, here is much nicer than Skypark in every aspect! However, at the same time it makes me lazy to have a studio near my flat, because I can wake up late, I can come back for lunch or for picking up something I forgot to bring. This is very important for me to keep myself busy and hard worker.

light tunnel

canteen 

looking down other levels..

Although this term is going to be extremely busy, I don't wanna be in panic yet, and am trying to have time apart from uni work. Here's a little embroidery I did for my friend.

project reflection

The first thing I think through Folk Project is that even though this project wasn't very long, I feel I took a very long and winding way until I produce the final pieces. From my geometrical and abstruct designs no one would see that I started with figure sketching . Indeed, this was a suprise for myself too to have got the result which looks quite Mexcan folk art which I was initially inspired by. In that sense, my long journey was successful and I am happy with it, and the design process blog is helpful to reflect it.
Taking notes and thoughts on my own work on weekly bases is a simple thing but great to do in terms of time management, and that made me not to repeat the same mistake. Also recording photos is helpful as visual information of what I have done each week.
Over all, design process project gave me an opportunity to analyse my own work and to look at process not only outcomes. This was similar experience to keeping journal but less personal, and it gave me a critical viewpoint.

here's my final design for a rug :)

cushions...

stripes

This week, I've been working on much simpler design than before. When the design was on a laptop screen, it looked quite boring, and I was worried about it. However, the simple design worked well on fabric, and I actually enjoyed translating the lines to embroidery and discovering cozy—at least for me— texture. An interesting thing is that my designs often go wrong and look awful when I'm making samples, and I hate this, but they look okay by the time it's all done. Contrastingly, the outcome sometimes turns very bad although it looked fine until finishing. The fact made me realised the importance of planing and technical sampling, and consideration to material. 

Interms of visualisation, I've been anxious about it as my visualisation for the last project wasn't attractive at all. I often procrastinate this stage, and tend to do it in last minutes, but visualisation is actually the thing audience usually look first, and it gives them the impression of the whole collection. If I make bad visualisation again, it means that I would waste all efforts on my samples. Yes, let's do it as soon as possible and as nice as possible. 

nearly there

After having fun with sample making for last two weeks, I am stuck again.

Rug design which is necessary for this project has't been clear in my mind and I tried not to see the fact but this is the time to face it. I decided to go back to drawing so that I can develop simple and manufacturable designs, and I think this was the right choice. Drawing from completed design is challenging but it doesn't have a risk of taking me far away from the other designs, so it's actually not a bad idea to do it at this point.

Another problem is the complexity of my design. Although it is important to look at details, simple repeats and big scales need to be considered especially for interior products. Now I've got four completed final samples which are pretty much complex, so I want another half of the collection simpler than those.

the third sample—in progress 

Quality of fabric is significant for simple design because if you use fabric which looks cheap, it affects very much. Luckily I got a big square of beautiful lime green velvet for £1 from Mandors, so I am using this a lot.

So much to do in two weeks before the deadline, but I want to enjoy the madness.