What am I doing here?

 

This week has been somewhat difficult, I attended my 'Taller de Moda' class, with uncertainty as to my continuation with the class, or if I would look to swap to the 'Disseny de Moda' class which is less practical and more conceptual, like project work, also looking into trends. I presented my work and ideas for my collection, however throughout the class we were advised that a complete look has to be completed in toile by the following Monday, this just seemed such a jump up from the very basic ideas and research that I and everyone else had done, and I kept considering the amount of other work that I had to complete for the other modules. I had made my decision to swap. I had so much other things to do and revision for my history exam coming up soon, translating all the Catalan notes, doing all my pattern cutting classes, which is really hard to focus on because it is taught so differently here, then throw in a whole much of language problems I have, oh and not to forget textiles and a giant book I need to make full of knitting samples. Theory exams to go with that! I don't want to create bad work and I feel that if I am over rushed then my work will be substandard, so the swap was entirely necessary. In the photo above you can see some of my pattern cutting work, with some pages photographed from a really interesting book that one of the students had, called 'Pattern Magic' I must buy this book ASAP so that I can learn more of the tricks. There is also one of my toiles for a pair of overly baggy trousers with a skirt that I altered from a classic trouser pattern. It didn't really work so I turned it into a catsuit...as you do. 

The above photograph is proof of how late I arrive home...I pass the Torre Agbar every night when I come home from uni, it's so beautiful, I had to take a quick snap of this. The same day I went in search for fabrics to make another pair of trousers with a geometrical pattern. I discovered a great store nearby called 'Stocks Textiles' it's in Poble Nou. They have some lovely fabrics there and at a reasonable price. Because it's so close this will come in handy for me. I noticed most the well priced tweeds, I know I'm on a budget but I would really love to make some tweet classic pants in a toile....then maybe take them home and wear them. It seems a waste to make my toiles in calico right now...or maybe I just want more clothes for my wardrobe ha! And as you can see by the photographs of the pattern cutting, it's all from scratch. No blocks, really technical. Hard but I feel like I'm learning a good skill here...providing my Spanish improves and it starts sinking in finally! 

These mood boards were what I prepared for my new class on Friday, the one that I swapped to. I am fully aware that I am playing catch up here and I have a lot of work to do. The class is 3 weeks ahead of me, but even with all the work I have to do, I still tried to get some basic concepts and ideas together. Basically what I have to do for one part of the class is to create a final item of clothing influenced my a tradition that has become less popular, take it and reinvent it in a modern way. If that be a textile technique or taking inspiration from a festivity or event itself and working that into a modern fashion concept. I have to say that this really does sound interesting and fun as a project brief. I wanted it to also be something more personal to me, so I chose the English tradition of Morris dancing. Specifically during the event of May Day. 

I presented these two boards to my lecturer and he liked the idea. Obviously I am playing catch up and need to have way more work for next week with fabric samples of what I wish to do for my final garment. But all this aside it went well. And since speaking with my lecturer, I have thought of brining in embroidery, and using the idea of the May Queen wearing such a pale white dress, embroiling this dress with flowers from the celebrations, using PVC strips and weaving them into the white, giving a semi transparent image of the embridary below. In my head it looks brilliant, but it's hard for me to describe. When I get my act together with this I will post up some designs. 

Also for the class we have another project working in groups and we will work on trends, every group has been given a different fashion capital to base trend research on. For this my group, we are working on trends for S/S 2015 New York. This is the time I really could do with assess to WGSN. It would make life a lot easier for me, but oh well...another  challenge ahead...now we shall see if the trend forecasting events really help (I'm sure they do because they were so interesting!) the test of my trend knowledge eeeekk!! 

During the weekend I have had a homesick moment. That lasted the entire weekend. It involved me sitting in my apartment, moping. Seriously the whole weekend. I think that I was so traumatised by the busy weeks of highs and lows that I started losing faith in my abilities. Most days, I leave my apartment at 8am and I don't return home until 9pm. It's really really tough and has an effect on me mentally and phisically. I feel like a zombie. I am so frustrated with myself for not picking things up instantly, I'm letting it get to me way too much. Also it doesn't help that I miss my family, I didn't think that it would effect me like this, I thought that I was strong enough to be away from home for any amount of time. But I'm not, I guess it's fine when you're having fun, but when you're not, you just want some friendly faces around.  FaceTime doesn't seem enough right now...but who am I kidding? As if I would get any time to spend with friends or family if they did come to visit. 

I hope for a more productive and happier week starting tomorrow. I think I've sorted my head out for now. It's a challenge and I don't quit, it may be hard but I must keep going just to prove to myself that I can live in a beautiful hell and come out the other end. Quitters doing get far in life. I must keep going.

All work and no sleep...

I have been here since the 3rd September, during this short time I have noticed something..... I can't tolerate fake niceties and small talk. I especially don't like people who disagree for the sake of disagreeing. Children pretending to be adults and trying to come across as they know more of a subject than you, even when it's what you have been studying and working as for the past 7 years. And it comes to the point of not giving a damn to correct their misguided views, nor their manners.

Yes, today has been a bad day...I went to my class where I am working on the collection for Desigual, I had done so much work over the weekend, so much that I was very sure I had a good concept. The homework was to research into different printing techniques. And dying or what pre printed fabric I wanted, suitable for the final design for a whole look. So I did all this and 6 slightly different designs for this one look, however, because my Spanish is crap, I couldn't explain that back home we don't  just do one design...there is a process if development, something which here it doesn't seem told hold much importance . The lecturer told me the designs were very similar, but I hadn't yet got to the final design here, it's unnatural for me to pluck designs from minimal inspiration and research. This was my development process. Anyway, the long and short of it, I am feeling distressed, frustrated at my lack of Spanish vocabulary, the fact I am having to relearn all the pattern cutting I have done back in England in this Barcelona way....which is about 10 times harder. I want to go home. 

The lecturer wants a whole look made in toile by Mondays lesson with accessories, and also any printing done. Today is the day I decided that I will drop this class and take the fashion design projects instead. The main reason is that I'm on a budget, I can't afford this amount of fabric. I have already spent 2400€ since I've been here...buying materials, new pattern-masters, scissors, pens, paper, a new tablet because mine broke and I really depend on it, bed sheets, towels....you know....basically everything I could have brought with me but I decided to opt for a larger collection of different outfits to wear while I'm here...this is a problem with all fashion students. We love clothes more than perhaps more necessary items 

 

I had a textiles class today and I'm learning how to make jumpers out of wool with a knitting machine. In my English uni, we don't have these. We have a whole bunch of other stuff like laser cutters and sonic welders. Which I am so grateful I have assess to because when I tell the students here what I have at my uni the general reaction is one of amazement at how modern we are in Coventry. It is important to learn as many different crafts as possible, so even though its completely new to me at least I am gaining knowledge in other areas.

 

Another week of uni passes and I'm tired

For this week I needed to have some mood boards ready for my Desigual collection. I decided to look into what Desigual is about, what it portrays....happiness, freedom, expression, exotic colours and moods and I also looked into the patterns, their prints are amazing. And fabric print is something I really enjoy creating. So then I looked into history and what I can take from this, with the intention of brining it into future concepts. I focused on Russian traditional dress, and here are my mood boards for this

In Monday I showed these to the class, unlucky for me the lecturer made me go first. This was awkward for me, not because I'm afraid to speak in front of people but more because I didn't have any idea of what kind of work the others had done and if I was on the right track or had gone way off. I've learnt very quickly that the students have a different way of working here, very good, but very different to how I have learnt to do things back home. I've basically done mood boards as I would for a project back home, and I was so nervous thinking 'please like it'. After my presentation the whole class clapped me, and this put my mind at rest instantly. There were a few problems showing my work through the computer they had in the room because illustrator wasn't installed on it and it couldn't read 'ai' files, I had to show it from my laptop. The others had saved their work to 'pdf' format. I need to keep this in mind for the future. As I sat there watching the other students' presentations, yeah sure mine was quite different, mine were mood boards consisting of only images that set me mood and inspiration, whereas the others had selected catwalk images, styles and a lot of writing contained in the presentation boards. With several different concepts but not a lot of work on each, more like a taster of each idea. I probably should have done this rather than go straight in deciding on Russia. There was a process behind my decision but maybe I should have shown this. I'm sure I can relate some of my thought process later on. 

For class next week I've been told to bring 5 items of my clothing because we are going to have a fun lesson with clothing manipulation. Also I need to work on selecting some images and making them into print designs, looking into print processes and thinking about which fabrics I would like to use for my final collection...wow this project is moving fast, though to be expected, I need to have my collection completely finished by January when I come back. I like that I'm being pushed, but I know I will have many crying episodes along the way! 

For Thursday I needed to have a pair of Desigual style trousers toiled up with pattern obviously, I'm sure the last time I made trousers was in the first year, and being honest, I HATE making trousers, because I always mess up the pattern and stitch the zipper wrong. Now I'm being told to alter the standard classic trouser to a Desigual style trouser, on my own and make it without help. As you can imagine I was terrified. Worked on the pattern Monday and Tuesday, I was sure it was wrong. Made it on Wednesday. My sewing was diabolical, quite possibly the worst I've even done, but in my defence, the machines in the uni are old versions of the ones I use back home, back home they have an underneath thread cutter, with a computer operated pad to change the speed of the machine. The ones here have neither of these things, with a nasty habit of unthreading all the time. What shoddy work I did took me about 4 hours, when back home it would have been perfect looking. And done within an hour. I will never ever moan about the machines back home again! And obviously come class on Thursday, I find out that my trousers were rubbish and not at all in the style of Desigual (kinda expected that one though) I wasn't the only one, apparently everyone's trousers were awful. And for next week I have to make another pair of trousers. Oh well. Let's hope I get it right this time! 

My induction week at university...

Wow, ok, I don't really know what has hit me this week. My induction week that I fully expected to be fun and easy, lazy and laid back...has been quite possibly the hardest week of my educational life. I will now bullet point things that I want to refer back to so that I don't get caught in a rant!

• I am trying to locate my classrooms and get lost
•  I need to fill in a form from the uni to obtain a certificate to take to the police station and get an NIA...but the form is in Catalan, and my translator is shit. 
•  I have fashion history class in Catalan 
• I have to design and make a collection for Desigual by the end of Christmas 
• After that I will be designing and making a collection of my choice for the final part of this module, finishing in June. 
•  In my pattern cutting class I am learning the very techinal side of building patterns from scratch

 Now the more positive things...

•  All my lecturers are lovely!
• The university had a welcome party for all of us 
•  I realise that this year will be tough, these guys produce so much work, but I know that I will learn so much.
•  I am gaining a new perspective on things
•  My Spanish is improving, and will only improve more as I go along 
•  I have made lots of Catalan friends, they have helped me so much already, they are so very kind and have made me feel like a part of this great big design family.

These are a few snaps of my first week, what the studios look like, what the reception building looks like and the bottom left is what the start of the welcome party looked like. It started off quite sophisticated until the vodka guns came out!

 

And the photos above are of Friday night at El Bosc de les fades and some Irish bar off La Rambla, at this point I was looking slightly worse for wear after having too many drinks at the earlier uni party. The slightly more beautiful photos were taken at an art exhibition, in a gorgeous building near the metro stop universitat. It had the most beautiful gardens, I couldn't stop taking photos...I've missed the English countryside since being here (which is strange because I always complain about my area back home, I didn't appreciate the quietness and farms, now I miss them) and Barcelona city centre isn't very green, so to see this was a treat. There were local artists and designers selling clothing, jewellery, prints and illustrations. I couldn't resist this really unusual dress, of course it's black...like most of my clothing. Photo to follow, it's too late to get out of bed and take one. I have uni tomorrow...and I'm about to present some of my initial ideas for my first collection here, it's a live project set by Desigual, 6 outfits of womens wear...motto being 'happy' and apart from my work generally being the opposite of happy...I feel challenged but this is a good challenge, I need to be forced out of my comfort zone. I have decided to look at Russian tradition for my inspiration. So wish me luck for tomorrow, I have no idea if they will love it or hate it and my self doubt is creeping.