Thought I'd start off by telling you of what I've been up to whilst I've been away from blogging.
My last but one post showed a very excited me who was still keenly crafting away making jumpers and little bits and bobs for my home and sewing box in between working on projects for school. I'd been to receive my a level results from where I took sixth form and was delighted to find I'd gotten the grades I'd needed to accept my place studying textile design at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Since then my life has changed dramatically, my family recently cant stop telling me how I've evolved into an inspiring adult.
My first year of university was one I was incredibly enthusiastic but also nervous about. What if I didn't make any friends, hated university halls, got too homesick and couldn't cope with the work load.
I took the four hour drive for the first time to Leicester in early October and moved into my new home at Newarke Point University Halls with ridiculous amounts of bedding, pots and pans and worst of all clothing (I had so much I couldn't fit it in my wardrobe- how about 7 pairs of pyjamas!) and fell right into place. My flatmates it turned out were just like me; slightly shy, creative and obsessed with cake. From here on I plunged into university life with my new flatmates and took on the monster which is freshers week. I never looked back. I can safely say my university experience has been the best experience of my life, I have gained so much in personality and life skills as well as a very extensive knowledge of textiles.
My flatmates; Olivia, Emma, Lindsey and Lizzie(Left to right)
The first week of my course was not worth an ounce of the worry I'd had before uni, I had loads of fun. Our first project was based on getting us to loosen up, relax and draw in a variety of ways, some of the ways in which we did were crazy (and still terrify me with the amount of mess that is made in the process). We did drawing to music, pin hole cameras, painting with large objects such as mops, large cardboard tubes and garden brushes and drawings from touch amongst many others.
The thing that terrified me most about my first week was when they told us to pull pages out of our sketchbooks, I'd never ever ever pulled a page out of my sketchbook. I was obsessive about being neat (aught to see me now, in my last project I pulled every page out of my sketchbook to regain a sense of flow within my work and rebound it all as a new one!).
Here's a few images of the work I did in my first project at uni:
Drawing to music workshop- we had to 'draw' (I quickly learnt drawing often isn't a pencil drawing but a collage, cut work, painting, mark making etc.) how we felt when we listened to different kinds of music
We were taught how to create pinhole cameras and expose them for certain amounts of time to create beautiful black and white images
Collage and drawing workshop using a variety of papers (left) and a key hole drawing, drawing outlines only (right)
The River Soar with reflections of Newarke Point, my university halls and flowers I threw into the river to bring both aspects of my project 'floral reflections' together
A drawing/cut out of lily pads I found on the River Soar with one of my works positioned behind to give a shot of colour
A still life drawing of a blade of grass corn in water using inks and felt tips and a watercolour wash to soften the whole image (left). A blue wash background with ink leaves stripped back with bleach to create negative leaves (right)
Finally here's me working in my studio beavering on after a tutorial with my tutor Claire!
I received good marks from my first project which made me feel very proud of myself and encouraged me to go on learning all about textiles.
Our following projects worked in what DMU (De Montfort University) call roundabouts and we were taught solidly on specific pathways for a period of eight weeks. These included, mixed media, print and construct (knitting and weaving). I thoroughly enjoyed learning all the different technical processes of these roundabouts, some of which I enjoyed more so than others, mixed media and the weaving part of construct the most.
One of my print finals, my concept was old fashioned libraries and clocks which involved a lot of mark making. I enjoyed learning about processes such as flock, foils and screen printing because I'd never printed using anything bar lino and polystyrene blocks onto paper before. The mess formed by printing was unbelievable, this was my first big experiences of waste formed by textiles. There was a lot of washing and drying of screens, mixing of certain binders and colours and shaking of flock pots to form our final pieces, a lot of which couldn't be reused or had dried out by the time it came to forming new prints hence the mass of waste. Saying of mess, you can imagine my clothes by the end of most days regardless of the aprons we wore. Much to the joy of my wardrobe as it became allowed to breath a little, a few garments got thrown away
One of my final mixed media pieces including a leather cut out, hand dyed fabric and ribbon work to represent my concept of distorted reflections in shop windows. This project was a challenge at first because the whole project had to be yellow, with no exceptions, only shades were allowed. When evaluating this project as a third year I realised I learnt a lot about colour from this project than I initially thought as my use of colour is far more fluid now. On this roundabout we learnt about a range of processes including, couching, free machine stitching, embellishing with beads and cut work.
One of my woven finals (for inspiration link see below in knit section), weaving hypnotised me in the time scale of our construct roundabout because of the sheer complexity of it. I couldn't get enough and was in most days for as much time as possible. I had only woven on a hand held weaving frame doing plain weave before so weaving on table top eight shaft looms thoroughly excited me as we learnt to do several weave structures coming out with a exemplar book of weaves to aid me in my future studies. To form the weave above I wove a diamond twill using bouclé and fine polyester yarns
One of my final knits inspired by clusters of objects such as cars, food packaging on shop shelves and the DMU yarn stores. I used eyelets, fancy eyelets with curves and pick up stitches to form this piece, some of the many stitches taught to us within this roundabout. I found knit to be rather fiddly as once you'd made a mistake such as dropped a stitch and it had laddered down your knit or you'd lost your whole knit on the floor you had to start from fresh (which happened many a time much to my despair)
We undertook a variety of different modules as well as our design module which broadened our understandings of fibres, how yarns/fabrics are made, trend predictions, dying, drawing and blog writing. These modules have really helped me when experimenting, researching and being inquisitive to form innovative projects from the suggestions and processes taught to us via our tutors in my second and third year.
One of my modules was on trend prediction, we had to create a trend of our own based on what we thought would bring something new and fresh to the market. I decided to form a fashion trend of ladies suits with a target market of women aged 25-35 who wanted to stand out as youthful and daring. I decided my suits would be made from mainly space dyed cotton but also of a heavier weight upholstery fabric for sections such as collars to add interest to normal suit appearances. I chose a bright colour pallet and vibrant patterns which was in fitting in my market aims.
Asian storing implements at the Victoria and Albert that I used as research for a drawing project on clashing imagery
Our last week and drawing project of first year involved us deciding which roundabout we preferred most to carry on into our second and third years and specialise in. We were taught by tutors of our selected roundabout to alter our research ways to aid final outcomes in how we'd decide on technical processes for print, mixed media, knit or weave.
Before this happened though we had to decide which roundabout to specialise in.. I initially believed this to be a straightforward route.
The day we had to hand our forms giving our decisions as to our selected specialism to our pathway leader I went in saying I wanted to do mixed media. I had been totally obsessed by it (as you can see from all my high school artworks) and felt I was more likely at the end of my course to get a job because of the variety of processes involved in it. Going home after a full day of uni I found I couldn't stop thinking about my decision to specialise in mixed media though. A mammoth advantages and disadvantages list and talks with all sorts of people later, I decided to go with my heart and obsession with weaving as I knew I would regret it otherwise.
And there ladies and gents is my first year of university! I feel my first year taught me a lot that I only appreciate now that I am perfecting and pushing the boundaries of my pathway (still weave). More so because upon speaking to students on other courses (the textile conference earlier this term being one opportunity to do so) I found that our course is a rare one in teaching us a wide variety of skills. Many other uni's only teach the design side of textiles leaving their students to research and make their own mistakes as to yarn, bead and dye selections without the knowledge of how to look for trends and fibre types in a taught way. This knowledge gives me confidence that our course, though hard work to balance all modules is well worth the effort as we're gaining skills that are incredibly valuable to our job futures.
The most important thing I learnt from first year is to relax and realise that regardless of how much work you have and how hard it feels at the time you will get it done. I still stick by this saying now, my course mates and I regularly tell each other in states of panics we'll all survive the project.
By the way, I did do a few crazy nights out like students are re-known for and live a little in between all the donkey work promise. On my course I found joining a society crucial as otherwise you don't have a break from work and gradually turn into a crazy loon. I joined the DMU swim and triathlon team for this reason and went on tour to Portugal with them in the summer of my first year. I owe a massive thanks to them for bringing me out of my shell and encouraging me to push myself in all walks of life.
DMU Swim and Triathlon team swimming at the university varsity competitions in my first year, 2014
