The Exhibition Experience

The big day has arrived, All the hard work, long nights, stress and tantrums have come to an end. After two years at Barnsley college, last night marked the end of it. The skill's and confidence I have gained in the past year specializing in textiles was shown through my exhibition last night. It was so surreal and content to be able to take a step back and look at all my hard work and the final outcomes of my final major project, From the needle felted petri dishes and brain's to the huge 4 meter long scarf, I can actually honestly say to my self I put every single bit of my brain and body into making this project as amazing as I can. It was so lovely to see all my class mate's and their supportive families and friends looking around at people's work I am so proud of us all. 

I had an army of people come see my exhibition (well 11 people - still a lot of people!) we all met up outside college and waited in the sun for the last few to arrive. When we went into the college we all got stickers for the show and carried on to the huge que for the lift, We were all so hot from being out in the sun and waiting to get in a crammed lift wasn't the best start. However when we finally got to the 6th floor where my exhibition is, There was wine, white and red, Juice, Orange and blackcurrant flowing and smiles on all the proud teachers face's. Of course we went straight to see my exhibition first before we went to have a look around and I greeted both of my tutor's (Kat and Kathryn) with a little bit of a present and a card each with a paragraph full of thankyou's inside! My family were blown away with what I had created, All my family and friends are really supportive and are so proud of what I do (textiles) however it's so hard to explain how to screenprint and the design cycle and what not to people who don't really understand it all as it's more of a practical subject, Once they saw my exhibition they were more clear and understanding of it and they instantly fell in love with it. We had a look around other peoples work and looked in other room's and saw lot's of talented young students work. After we had looked around it was far too warm and we decided to have a little walk to a near by pub to cool off and have a few celebratory drink's before we headed off home. I had such a nice time with all my family and my friends coming, It was a nice evening and when I got home I did feel a little smug (haha!.) 

Something I realised was that the feeling of achievement is much bigger and better than the feeling of stress and anger which you can feel like during deadlines and big project's. I'm so so happy I pushed my self as much as I can because I've proved to everyone that I can do it. One way I look at it is like a game - You do not want to be stuck on the first level for the rest of your life do you? You have to push yourself and set your self goals to get to the next level and that's what I feel I have done. From starting specializing in textiles a year ago I have grown so much, The skills and confidence I have gained are so amazing and I would say I have defiantly developed my own style of textiles and my own use of colour. I have successfully completed the foundations of which my career may grow on and that's super exciting! 

Big thank you to both my tutor's for pushing me to have independence in my work and to do the best I could. They have both been my motivation and both been such a big help when it came to printing things up as my screens were so big it was a two man job! They are defo the best teachers I've come across and If you are every considering taking textiles at Barnsley college I would recommend it so much!

The next step for me is university, at Huddersfield to study Textile Design with surface design. So unfortunately this blog has come to the end until September time where I shall be using it to blog my journey through textiles at uni! I now have a second blog which I am going to be putting more time and effort into which you can find here at 'threadsanddaisies' this blog will be more of a craft, fashion and lifestyle blog which will be much more personal as this blog is just for college and will be for university projects.

Here are some photo's from my exhibition.

If you are interested in looking at my exhibition as well as other student's work you can see it on the 6th floor of Barnsley college for the next 2 week open 9-5. If you are interested in buying a scarf from my collection (more colours available) silk are £22 and muslin are £18.

Thank you to everyone who has followed my journey through textile's at Barnsley college and I shall be back when I start university with whole new project's and exciting thing's! Thank you all for reading!

A Day In The Life #8 - Scientific Petri Dishes!

While it's been lovely weather today in soggy old Yorkshire I've taken advantage of the weather and took a few little snap's of my creations which I did today. I got a little bored of creating needle felted bacterial petri dishes to sew on my exhibition scarf and decided to create some more nicer and mixed media bacterial petri dishes which shall be put in real scientific petri dishes to put on show at my exhibition. 

I used my normal technique of building colours up and needle felting them together eventually creating a wide circle. I then used different coloured angelina fibers and needle felted them in too. I think this is what really makes it come to life and look really nice, I then felted some little circles on top of all this to make it look like some bacteria growing on it. 

They fit perfectly in the petri dishes I ordered of ebay. I think they will look really great for my exhibition. Although they are easy to do they are quite time consuming. 

I hope you all liked my short but sweet day in life - fingers crossed tomorrows will be filled with lot's of sun as the weather is due to be nice. 

Thank you all for reading x

A Day In The Life - Long Weekend

Sorry I've not posted in a few day's I've had a bit of a break from blogging/preparing for my exhibition, even though my exhibition is on the 23rd of this month, It was a well needed break. Although, back to reality now. Friday was the day I finally got my holographic heat transfer material onto my big scarf, I had already cut out many circles out of the material and was ready to use the heat press to stick them on. I thought this would take longer than it did but it only took an hour or so, Thanks to the good people in the print room for helping me getting the backing off of the heat transfer. The heat transfer was to put in the circles from my design I printed. In each circle there are 3 little circles (where the heat transfer will go) however I decided to put the heat transfer in only 1 or 2 circles rather than all 3 of them as I did not want it to look too much.
The heat press is set at 180 degrees and to a timer of only 18 seconds, This is enough for heat transfer, pressing fabric and what ever else you may need to use the heat press for. After peeling the backing off the heat transfer I then placed them where they needed to be and used the heat press to stick it on. Here are a few photo's.

The outcome of this looked really amazing. My plan for this big scarf is to make it look really amazing and wacky. To sew loads of things onto it and for it to look as tactile as possible. This was a good start.

After a nice shopping filled weekend off doing college work and blogging, we come to today, Monday. Today I have hand sewn on some angelina fibers and needle feltings I created. Sewing them on using a sewing machine would be much faster and secure, But I don't have a sewing machine at home and after hand sewing them on I really loved the way it looked. 

I love how this is progressing into something more tactile, I shall be sewing more of these on my scarf tomorrow and created more needle felted jewelry. 

Thank you all for reading x

A Day In The Life #4 - Printing My Big Scarf

Today has been the big day!! I've finally printed up the main part of my exhibition which is my big scarf!! Keep reading if you want to know how I did it and see how it looked in stages.

To get started I washed down the printing table I was working on and dried it too. I then measured to where my screen would be once placed on the registration bar and laid my fabric in the correct place on the table so my fabric would be clear of 1 inch on each side so I can clean the ends up on the sewing machine at a later date. I used masking tape to tape my fabric down, making sure its straight and its pulled tightly. 

I then got my pigment's together, As I am recreating one of my samples I am using the same colour pigments I used on that sample.

ignore the back colour as I did not need this or use this for my exhibition scarf. 

Once I had my colour's sorted it was time to print, As my screen's and fabric are so large I had to have the help of kathryn to help me print my screens also because I had not used the registration bar before. First off I printed the pink pigment.

After I had printed this colour I was so excited because it was finally coming to life, I washed and put my screen to dry while this pink pigment was drying, I then got my next screen and got ready to print again this time in blue pigment, This will go over some of the pink at a slight angle to make a purple colour with a blue shadow and also just be blue in other places it is printed.

 I then used my third screen and printed the cells to my fabric and this is what the end product looked like.

I am so so so so excited and in love with the outcome of my big exhibition scarf I can't even put it into word's, The colours are just beautiful and I am so proud of the print. I now need to add my mixed media onto the top of it, Such as sewing my needle feltings onto it and adding my holographic heat transfer, Also using dissolvable fabric and angelina fibers to sew onto it. I still have my work cut out but the end product will be so so worth it. I got gave so many packets of angelina fibers today from my tutor it felt like Christmas!!

After I had printed my big scarf I had time to print one of my normal sized scarfs which I shall sell at my exhibition, The one I chose to print was the orange/pink coloured light silk scarf. I started by masking taping the fabric down. I used similar colours but not exactly the same as they were different shades and instead of doing my cells green I did them a coral colour for this scarf. Here are the pictures after each screen print although I failed to get one of the end product, However I know you shall see it in a future blog post.

I did not get a picture after printing the last screen so I am sorry about that. After I took this off the print table and hung it to dry I instantly fell in love with it, The way the pattern and colours move on the floaty silk amazed me. I am so happy with the work I have done today and I cant wait to produce more.

My to do list from tonight is...

- Sew my needle felting's onto my big scarf.

- Do more dissolveable fabric on the sewing machine.

- Use angelina fibers and interfacing to create more mixed media for my big scarf.

- Use my holographic heat transfer material on my big scarf.

- Print up my other smaller scarfs and dye more material.

- Buy Petri Dishes and Jar's

I hope you have enjoyed tonights blog post, Come back tomorrow to see what I've been getting up to tomorrow.

Thankyou for reading.

A Day In The Life - #3

Today's day in the life blog post consists of me dying up fabric, washing and pressing my fabric, Helping out my friend print onto her fabric and needle felting so keep reading if you want to see and read in more detail what I did.
Up and out early this Monday morning, 9AM start at college, I started off this morning by dying the fabric that was the off cuts from my big exhibition scarf, as they are different sizes they shall just be little bits of fabric for headscarfs or what ever people would want them to be, waste not want not, I'm not one to chuck fabric out. 

This length of fabric in the picture above is one of the off cuts from my previous pieces of fabric, I found this wasent long enough for a scarf so I dyed it some bright colour's to use maybe as a headscarf. After I had dyed this and put it to dry, The colour's left behind on the printing table were so so amazing...

I decided to use another piece of cut off fabric to lay on top of this dye, To see how the fabric would pick up the colours and see what it would look like.

After just one press on the dye this is what the fabric looked like, I really think it looks really good, I put this fabric to one side and used it after I had dyed some fabric, each time I would lay this fabric on the left over dye on the print table. After I was happy with the outcome I pressed and washed it and used it as a headscarf for my own personal use as it was not suitable for anything else.

Excuse the mirror selfie, the apron and the sweaty face but this is what the final outcome of my improvised head scarf looked like, I am going to keep this for my self as I would make it neater and longer if I was to sell it but I personally like it how it is.

After I had cleaned up my space on the table I had a think of what I could dye up next and decided to go with silk scarfs, As I will be selling some scarfs some people will not want crazy wacky colours therefore I shall print some on just white backgrounds and some on block colour backgrounds. After cutting my silk scarfs out I filled 2 buckets with water and measured out some procian dye mixing them to make lighter or darker shades and testing the colours with little silk swatches. I left my silk in the buckets (each had their own bucket as they are different colours) and left them in there untill the end of the day when Kathryn will take them out and place them on the table to dry over night. 

After I had done all this I helped my friend Thea who's blog you can find here. To print one of her fabrics up. I have never used the registration bar to screen print, tomorrow I shall be using it to print my own fabric up. Today I used it for the first time to help Thea print her fabric up and I was so amazed at how easy and quick it is, It will really help me with time management to get my final pieces printed before the exhibition. Here are a few pictures of me and Thea printing her fabric up...

After we had finished printing this fabric up I still had an hour left of college, I decided to dye up one more piece of fabric, Muslin this time, Using orange,Yellow and Pink colour's. 

This was really simple to do, I just wet my fabric by painting on water then splatted the dye on the fabric with paint brushes. It leaves such a lovely effect when the fabric is lifted off the table. After doing this I then pressed and washed all my fabric I had dyed that day. Early this morning I also pressed and washed my big exhibition scarf by using the heat press then putting it on a quick rinse in the washing machine. 

When I got home I decided to do some needle felting as Iv still a lot to do and I figured an hour or so a day will make it easier than letting it all build up. I did a few more bacterial petri dish needle felts and created some little needle felts which I would describe to look like looking down a microscope, These shall be attached to plain rings by the hot glue gun to sell in my exhibition, I am still trying to perfect these as I shall be making a lot of them for my exhibition. Here are a few photo's from today's needle felting session.

The needle feltings which are to sew onto my scarf I am not creating them as detailed and creative as the first ones I did as they will not be shown close up and I am trying to manage my time well, Although the ones which will be in the petri dishes are really beautiful to look at.

Tomorrow's blog post will hopefully be showing you how I printed up my big exhibition scarf as well as the fabric I have dyed today. And some more needle felting. So keep your eyes peeled!!

Thankyou all for reading! Come back tomorrow x