Final pieces of Knit

Tutorial and new technics

I was really confused about how to relate my drawing to my work last week. Julia told me the key point is the colours. It helped me a lot. After tutorial with her, I started to understand how to connect the link between research and samples. And I have some rough idea to make samples as well.

Julia also shown some new technics to us.

I love knitting

I really enjoyed this technical block, and I will consider to chose it as my main subject.

I have learnt some amazing technics in first week.

    

I also watched some hand-knitting videos in the Internet and practiced some skills.

Enjoying the knit block

Someone told me that If I enjoyed the weave block, I would be interested in knit block. I did enjoy the knit block today.

Before starting, I noticed the nice yarn wrapping under the table. It is like a record of every process we made. I think it's beautiful and meaningful.

Our tutor Tim showed us some basic technic. It was quite clearly and easy to understand. However, I found the most important thing is choosing the yarn that is not easy to broke off while using knitting machine.

It was so annoying when the yarn is broken.

I'm really looking forward to getting more technical skills in the rest of this block after practicing.

I also had fun in the hand-knitting. The tutor is so nice and patient.

First week after Christmas holiday

I was working on stitch block this week, which I think is a hard technical block. At first, I was confused about how to develop my drawing into a sample. After practice and tutorials, I made some progress. By the end of this week, I decided to develop one of my samples further to be my final piece.

It was great to see a wide range of materials, and it was interesting to make samples with these materials as well. However, I didn't enjoy this block that much honestly.

Briefing of Stitch

In the morning, we showed our drawing from the last few drawing weeks to our tutor one by one, and she tried to teach us how to develop the drawing into a stitch sample. She also told us stitch is a hard block to start with, but it's also easy to play with your ideas.

After lunch, we were with the stitch technician Aimee Betts. She instructed us how to use the sewing machine and showed us some techniques for stitching samples. Then we got some time to practice on the sewing machine. It was the first time for me to use a sewing machine, so it was really rough for me. However, everything got better with the help of Aimee and my peers.

Stitch is a really interesting part of textiles. I believe I will enjoy it.

Assessment for print block

Today is the assessment for the second technical block. After displaying my own works, I walked around the studio and had a look other's works. Their works are really fabulous. It made me feel like I'm not good enough and my peers have all done much better than me. But some of my classmates appreciated my print works, which made me feel happy and get confidence again. 

In this print technical block, I learned a lot. I learned some basic but really useful skills of Photoshop and Illustrator, and I also tried to mix chemical colours and dye silk on a screen. I really enjoyed this technical block, I am looking forward to the next technical block as well.

Chemical dying day

It was a really rough day today, but I learned a lot in the class.

At first, we learned to pin every side of the silk to the table. The silk must be perfectly flat. Then we have to place the stencils we made on the silk. These steps prepare for the next step, dying, which we were excited about.

Then we started to mix the colours. The tutor introduced us to two types of dye; acid-levelling & acid-milling. These two dyes are good for dying silk. However, the main difference is acid-levelling works better on wood, acid-milling is nicer on silk. Before we mixed the colours, we had a look at the colour samples on the wall, and then chose the colours we wanted. In the learning stage, we used 100 gram recipes for dying silk. We mixed a little bit of Ammonium Oxalate, Perminal KB and Glydote BN with 70g Indulca, then added about 3g dye to them. It smells so chemical.

After mixing the colours, we started dying the screen or other kinds of materials.

I felt so tired after standing all day doing dying. But it was a really interesting class today, I enjoyed it.

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