'Twas Week Before Christmas

and while ignoring her spouse, Kat was busy beading and binge watching House.

19/12/16 - 23/12/16

I have to admit that I took a pretty relaxed approach to this week, I felt like I worked quite hard last week getting my fashion samples foiled and finished and things, so this week I thought like I'd take things a little slower than normal. At first I was just beading my foiled paper samples, just sticking them with double sided tape rather than stitching, just to get an idea of what it would look like if I'd done it on a larger scale piece of fabric. I used my drawings and digital work as a guide, it was just some work that was easy to do at a relaxed pace, but it was actually quite helpful. I knew I'd wanted to embellish my fabrics, but I wasn't very confident at actually stitching onto the fabrics, so this definitely helped with that. Plus, it was easy to do whilst watching all the tv series that I'd wanted to watch during the term! 

I also then thought about what Nick had said in my extra tutorial, and tried to take elements from my interior drawings and developing them a little further than I had originally. I was quite happy with the gradient designs that I had come up with; but it can't hurt to take it a little further can it? After all, I'd just taken a drawing a repeated it, so this week I was trying to take small elements and make new drawings from that, then to make into a repeat. I first took the triangular design from the roof tops of some drawings, but decided a zig-zag was probably a little too simple, so I created small scenes inside that to then create into a repeat. 

Above are the three scenes that I came up with originally, but I felt like three wasn't enough, so I began to put together a 5 scene repeat, that then repeated 3 down, like this:

A   C   Y

B   X   A

C   Y   B

X   A   C

Y   B   X

I made it out like this, and then filled in the gaps. Here it is in context: 

I wanted it to be quite complex, and I think I've managed that. It has the same busy, piled up feel that I felt like I had in my previous designs, but this time the repeat was less obvious. I'm a little worried about time though, as when term starts again we obviously only have 5 days before the deadline, and I still have my report to finish, but I'd like to do a few more... at least 1 anyway! I think taking elements from my drawings definitely makes it a little more interesting, it's just I think this one looks a little flat? My others had a bit more depth because of the gradient and I just don't think that the two-tone thing works for me.. I don't do it well enough. Hopefully I can mix the two and create something a little more interesting than this one. It's a good starting point though, not bad for a days work - it took me a while to work out how the repeat would work, but once I'd figure it out, building it came quite quickly. Here is an image of the whole repeat: