I feel like I am complaining and whining all the time but this was a painful and stressful assignment, I actually thought about quitting the course. The beginning of the assignment was fine, I had fun and I fancied a lot some of the exercises, I am almost proud of some of the results of combining textures and colours. Thanks to this assignment, I came up with the softies idea and at this moment there is a very small exhibition of my softies in a book shop nearby. But projects 4 and 5 were hard, I felt a huge lack of motivation and totally uninspired, both are reflected on my work and the exercises result, it is a kind of a disaster. But it is finally done.
The exercises I enjoyed the most were those of project 3 even if I got stuck in the begining. After doing some mood drawing and finding some colour inspiration, I finally arrived to the stitches part. After some experiences with some polyester thread, I finally reached the natural fibres' threads part. I "weaved" a small cotton rectangle with my sewing machine. On these embroidery exercises I used different threads made of cotton, wool, silk and steel. There were by far my favourite exercises on this assignment. The use of threads made with such different yet natural materials was very pleasant. To look for and to find such threads was not only an interesting learning experience but also very useful for my regular work. But the most amazing thing was the soluble fabric, it was just amazing. I had no idea it existed because I do not use my sewing machine to embroider and it was quite a surprise.
I kept on using some stitches I discovered during the first assignment, I used mainly machine cable stitch, free machining and a thicker thread on the bobbin. Along with the new threads, these stitches became something that I started to use in my regular work as a seamstress. After these exercises, I also feel like I developed some skills related to colour, I have the sensation that now I see colours more accurately, I could feel an improvement from one exercise to another.
Projects 4 and 5: these were both very difficult for me. And I did n'importe quoi just to get it over with. I finished them, I am not happy with the results and I didn't really make any progress doing them. I did both just because I had to. My approach is not the best but with so much delaying I just had to finish the assignment. Meaning by this that I don't even know what to say about it now. I liked to work with Markal paintstiks and I truly believe I will enjoy to screen print. I already like block printing and I will try to develop it.
Conclusion: independently of liking the exercises or not, of feeling inspired or uninspired, I am very happy that I made the decision of taking this course. Why? Because even not exploring it as I should and maybe even wasting it a little bit, I am learning. Every time I do something course related I learn and this is the most important of all, to learn and to discover and to exploit new techniques. Now I can keep on moving forward.