This week I planned to do my research. I did my research so that I could carry on with my final piece. From doing this research, I am now able to carry on and also improve my final piece and design ideas. I tried out different designs designs to use for my final piece and am now closer to a final design. I have also decided to digital print my fabric instead of painting it on freehand. I made his decision as I can’t be sure painting would be neat whereas digital printing would turn out a lot better than the paint.
Evaluation and Reflection
Review of week 5
This week I planned to prepare my screen for screenprinting, research and carry on embroidery for final piece. I prepared my screen but because of the tutorials I had earlier this week, I might not use it. I plan to still test it out to see how it would work. I also planned to do more research as I have new things to look into and get inspiration from it. I didn’t do this as I decided on a way to make my original plan work with the advice I got in tutorials. I planned to carry on doing the embroidery for my final piece. I did this but again after my tutorials, I’m not sure if I will use this. This is were my research will come in handy as I will look into the latest trends and see what’s in at the moment. From this I can decide whether to use my embroidery and the screen.
Tutorial 27/03/17
I had a tutorial with Pete. I told him my idea for my FMP and he seemed to like it. He asked me if I was going to do some more screen printing and I told him that I wasn’t sure and wasn’t sure what else to do. He said that I should do some more screen printing. I will take his advice and do some more screen printing. Pete suggested that I use photos of celebrities from the 50s and 60s and photos of my grandad and make a collage of the photos. I am to get the collage I make put on screen. With this I could create a repeat pattern of the collage and cover the whole garment with it.
Review of week 3
This week I planned to do some research on the 50s dresses/wedding dresses. I changed this idea slightly to look at 50s fashion in general. I also planned to try out screen printing. I did this and it went well and may use this technique for my final piece. As well as this, I started to think about what I wanted to put onto my final piece and also the silhouette of the garment. I did this from the research that I had done this week. I decided on using the classic 50s style silhouette. I am still not sure what I want to put onto my final piece and how I want to put it on. I am hoping that by the end of next week I will have a clearer idea. Because of this I didn’t start drawing them.
Embroidery evaluation
I got a photo of my grandad printed onto fabric in different sizes. There was colour on the photos because I got it off my phone. I didn’t like how this looked so I stitched over these areas. I was looking through a book called Drawn to Stitch: stitching, drawing and mark making in textile art. In this book, there are pages on different artists. I found an artist in the book called Bernie Leahy. She has stitched lines on faces to show the shading. This is what I tried to do with my photo. I chose to start stitching using yellow thread. Once I stitched everywhere I wanted to with this I got some feedback of Jess. She said it would look better with other colours. I took this advice and thought about going over the yellow using red and green thread. I used these threads in the order red, yellow and green. I am happy with the way this turned out and may use this technique in my final piece. If I was to improve this, I would stitch around both eyes instead of the one. I would also make the stitching on the chin less pointed and more rounded.
Embroidery evaluation
This piece is a cricket ball. I made this using appliqué and embroidery. I looked at cricket balls online as I wasn’t sure what they looked like. This didn’t work as well as I wanted. The stitches were hard to get right as they needed to be on an angle. I couldn’t get them on the angle so I had to just stitch it how I could. With this piece got feedback of my mum about it and she said that I should have added some black into it and also put my stitches curved round so that it looks like it is round instead of flat. If I did this again, I would take her advice and try to do what she suggested.
Review of week 2
On the second week, I planned to paint my canvases and carry on doing some embroidery. I embroidered a lot faster this and have managed to do 6 new pieces. I did the wedding month and year, the date of his first daughter, a cricket ball, the windrush boat and a globe. For the cricket ball, the globe and the windrush boat I used a mixture of techniques. These were appliqué and embroidery. I think they turned out well but there was a few things that I wasn’t happy with on some of them so I will probably redo them if I decide to use them for my final piece.
Review of week 1
On the first week, I planned to research some artist and do some practical work. I stuck to this plan. I researched the windrush boat and traditional clothing. This went well as I have learnt new things about the boat and the traditional clothing but as I am not wanting to do a garment anymore this research is no longer relevant. I came up with a new idea and started doing practical work for this. I spent some time doing a portrait of my grandad using embroidery. I don’t think I’ll use it in my final piece but it was a good thing to do for practice before doing my final ones. I also did some other pieces of embroidery including his date of birth, the place he grew up and some words that people said to my Nannie.
Embroidery evaluation
This piece of embroidery is the month and year of my Nannie and grandads wedding. I also put the ages that they were when they got married. I wasn’t sure if it was obvious this was when they got married so I decided to add some hearts to it. I chose pink because I think it represents love. To improve this, I would make the hearts a bit bigger because I dont think they have a good heart shape as they are quite small. The writing gets smaller so I would also improve it by trying to keep it the same size. 
Embroidery evaluation
I made another piece of embroidery for my first canvas. I think it is a good piece of work but when I placed it onto the canvas, it didn’t look as good as I thought. I think this because it is quite small compared to the other pieces I have done and also it is a different style to the other date that I did. I think I will redo this one. To improve, I will make ‘Lorraine’ bigger than the date and I will do this in bubble writing. I will keep the date the same as it is on this one.
Tomicha Gibson FMP 