April 2014!

Well, today was my first time to myself in around 3 weeks, and luckily, it was one of those really loooooong days! I feel like I've lived a whole weekend today, which has been great. After a sleep in, it was off to the markets where sadly, no treasures were found, except this nice sparkly headband!
It was great to be back in the studio, where I started some of the adjustments on my WoW pieces, as well as the labelling, and I'm starting to think about the dressing instructions! (almost a dissertation in itself!) I looked at one of my pieces, which even I struggled to put on correctly at the photo shoot, but I think with the press-studs and labels I am applying to orient it, it shouldn't be too hard to get it on the right way! Although I know there are quick-change requirements for our pieces, I feel as though you can't take everything into consideration. I'm making a one-off art-work, which evolves underneath my hands, and it's hard enough trying to make it multi-fit, let alone quick-change friendly. I often use lacing as it is multi-fit friendly, but I know it is time consuming for dressers. What's a gal to do?! Lacing doesn't feature in my work this year, but I know that my pieces are time consuming to assemble!!
For the first time in my six years of entering, I am making changes after the photoshoot! Nothing major, just a little extra volume to make this epic piece go up another level, to hopefully a stage-owning presence!

Half scale

Full scale

As well as these bits and pieces, I was working on my TAFE Studio garment pieces as well. This week I found out that whilst 1/2 scale toiling has its uses, it can also be an incredibly hard step to go from half to full scale pattern pieces. I really struggled to translate the information, and was amazed at how awry some measurements went! It has been slow progress this week, but I feel that the learning process has been well worth it. In the end, there were technical adjustments combined with intuitive guesswork - I got there in the end! Final full scale toile coming up!

Tech drawing of my Studio project

Although I have missed some Technical Drawing and Photoshop classes in the last week (due to my office replacement leaving and me having to go in to work - pooh!!) I have also managed to keep up with that work. Technical Drawing is almost a meditative experience as you ink the lines over your pencil tracing - it's so easy to wobble and go astray, but if you tell yourself that you are going to be fabulous and breathe deeply, you reach a stage where you can do it! Sometimes....!! It's been an interesting experience formalising a very organic design into a technical drawing - but it can be done!!

Hakaturi

I'm also rather proud of my recent efforts in Photoshop to remove this image of one of my Hakaturi pieces from the photo background - a complex image to deal with! I've now done two of the three pieces, using different techniques as I explore this programme. Yikes, my eyes, my hand - this is not comfortable work!! I hope to make a composite image of the three pieces modelled by Callum (in the front garden) into one.
Life continues on in its' crazy path, but I seem to be coping with what it is bringing me. Could I maybe request a little more downtime? Oh that's right, if I get it, I fill it........