I got my grades!

This morning was the last ever time I would walk into Barnsley college, I went to collect my grades! I was slightly nervous as I need to get distinction merit merit to secure my place at Huddersfield university. Before we all collected our grades I bagged up all of my work from the past 2 years, There was a lot! Today was the day I'd been working towards for the past two years so everyone in the class was rather tense. One by one our tutor took us out into a different room to tell us our grades individually, finally after waiting for what seemed forever I got my grade's. I got Distinction Distinction Merit, I was so so pleased with my self! It means I've got my place at university!! I can't really sum up my excitement in a blog post but you can imagine how I feel. 

Me and my tutors

Textiles 2014

So big thanks go out to my tutors for everything they have done for me, they have honestly been amazing and because of them I have grown so much and learned so many skills. I'm so excited and so scared now as the next chapter of my life will be moving out and starting university! If you have any tips or advice for me let me know!

Thank you for reading x 

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!

Project Update.

This past week/end I've not posted much on here, mostly because I've not been very well and also because I've only been doing the finishing touches to my final pieces and that would be boring to blog about. I've been rather poorly, like I said, I'm pretty sure it's because of stress due to my final major project and because of student finance and finding somewhere to live when I go to uni. However I am all better now and feel much more organised and productive, Today I printed up 2 more scarf's which makes 5 all together and then my big exhibition scarf which I have been finishing off today - hand sewing the angelina fibers and needle feltings on to it. Tomorrow I am going to be a very busy bee as I'm going to buy some jars for my exhibition for my business cards, Both creative and corporate, my needle felted brain, and jewelry I shall be selling. As well as doing more needle felting rings and maybe more sewing onto my big scarf. It's all finally coming together now and I couldn't be happier. The next post on here will probably be my exhibition post which shall be next Tuesday morning or so as I shall be extremely busy with finishing touches and putting my exhibition up and I don't want to blog about it and give the ending away. However if you follow me on instagram there might be a few cheeky pictures. I just want to say I am so happy with my final major project and I know how hard I have worked and the challenges I have set my self. I really hope you have all loved following my journey through my final major project through my blog. Everyone in the art, design and fashion department has worked really hard and put so much effort into their exhibition piece's It's all going to look fantastic. I would like to say, Thank you so much to my tutor and print room instructor for challenging me and pushing me to do better and better though out every project and for teaching me skills which will form my career (hopefully!). 

Sorry for not posting on here much, See you all next week for my exhibition blog post (I'm so excited!!) 

Thank you for reading!! x 

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 #7

All day I've sewn and sewn and sewn! My big exhibition scarf is finally coming together, The angelina fibers and needle felted bacterial petri dishes I had are all sewn onto the scarf, Of course with the scarf being 4.5 meter I had not created enough to cover the whole scarf as it is huge! Tonight and tomorrow I shall be creating more needle felting's and more angelina fibers to sew onto my scarf, As well as needing to make needle felted jewelry and print my scarfs to sell, So you will probably understand how stressful it is right now but hopefully it will all be worth it. So far I have sewn the angelina fibers underneath the needle feltings, But I shall also have random needle feltings scattered everywhere. Here are a few pictures of my progress.

That's been pretty much it for today guy's, hand sewing takes a lot of time and I've not had much time to do anything else today. I hope you all are enjoying the progress I am making.

Thankyou 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 #6

Today's productive day was spent in my bedroom surrounded by lot's of wool, plenty of packets of angelina fibres and enough jewelry making rings for ten dozen finger's. That's right, I spent my day making needle felted rings!! I've been trying to perfect these rings for a while, I wanted to make them look wearable but still really cool and colourful to fit in with my project, Today I got it right and I am really excited to share it all with you guys.

Gathering little amounts of different coloured wool, I felted them together to make a circle or an oval shape and using invisible string, a bit like fishing wire, I sowed the ring to the felt making sure it was really safe and secure. I then felted more wool onto the ring to cover the string and then covered with angelina fibers.

7

I really love how these rings have turned out and I am going to make as many as I can for my exhibition. I got really excited using angelina fibers and decided to use interfacing to create pages of angelina fibers to sew onto my big exhibition scarf. These look amazing, basically what you do is put down some paper and then some interfacing over it, layer up your angelina fibers and then put some paper over the top of it then iron the paper, when you lift the paper up the fibers have all stuck together and gone hard like a page and it looks amazing, I got a bit excited doing this and produced lot's of outcomes...

Today was a really productive day and I am really grateful that I can do these things at home as it really saves me time. Tomorrow I shall be using the heat press at college to add my holographic heat transfers to my big scarf. I hoped you liked this blog post, lot's of shiny things to keep you entertained! See you all tomorrow for #7 of my day in the life series. 

Thank you for reading x

Sneak Peek Of One Of My Silk Scarfs!!

Here's a quick sneak peek of one of my scarfs I shall be selling at my exhibition at Barnsley College from the 23rd June - 27th June. Every scarf to be sold will be different colours and will range from silk to muslin. I hope you all like it and you can manage to come look at all the hard work I have done!!

A Day In The Life #5 - Printing Silk Scarfs

My plan for today was to go to college this morning to cut out my holographic heat transfer material for my big scarf as I need to do this first before I can start sewing on my needle felting's. When I got to college the print room was free and I was able to print which is a bonus as I want to get everything printed as soon as possible then I can concentrate on other things such as my needle feltings for my scarf and for in my petri dishes and also for my rings and earings which came today!! So excited about that!!

Today I printed two small scarf's, one silk and one muslin, using very different colour's. The first one was my silk scarf. I started off by masking taping the silk down to the print table which I had previously cleaned and dried. 

The first colour I printed was a turquoise and blue colour and after I printed it, it looked like this.

After I had printed blue I washed my screen and squeegee and put them to dry, I got out my second screen and put some clean gloves on and got printing, This time I printed a bright pink colour.

I really like how this one looked after the second screen but I was struggling to think of what colour to use on my final screen. I decided to use the silver pigment, Although I had not used this before or sampled it I thought it would look good so I went ahead and used it.

The end product looks really amazing the silver pigment gives such a good finished look and I am so glad I used it!! I washed my screen and squeegee and put them to dry and took the fabric I just printed into the classroom to dry, I then washed and dried the table.

The next scarf I printed was one I dyed, pressed and washed yesterday which is the orange and yellow muslin one aswell as an off cut from my big scarf which I had dyed a few days before. I started off by masking taping the fabric's to the table, I then got my colour's and first screen ready and started printing!! The first colour I used for these fabrics was a coral/orange pigment I mixed myself. 

Leaving my pigment to dry on the fabric I took my screen and squeegee in the wash room to clean and then placed my screen in the drying cupboard. When it was time to do the next screen I went for a bright pink and hoped it would look alright.

You can not really tell on the picture above but the out come of the second screen looked really good and bright. The pink and orange really complimented each other on the background colour of my fabric. I next printed a purple pigment after I had washed and put my screen to dry and got my last screen out. 

I really liked the outcome of this scarf, perfect for summer! When I took it off the table and into the class room to dry, The colours look really beautiful when the fabric floats! I am so happy I got to print today as printing a little every chance I can get makes my time management better and means I can focus on my needle felting.

The jewelry making earings and rings I ordered came today and so did my petri dishes for my exhibition. I was so happy when they came as that means I can focus on doing them and I now know the sizes so I can needle felt for them now. 

I am really happy with the work I have completed today. My plan for tomorrow is to maybe go into college (Its my day off) to use the heat press if not then I shall be spending the full day doing some needle felting so I can use the heat press on Friday at college and also use the hot glue gun for my rings and earings.

I really hope you enjoyed my blog post and if you have any ideas for my exhibition or any feedback please feel free to get in contact with me, You can see how to find me on my about me page or just leave a comment on here. 

Thankyou for reading. Come back tomorrow!!