I swear the years begin to go by more quickly the older I get! I’m sure it took longer for a year to pass when I was younger.
This year has gone by fairly quickly and has been a full year for me. Back at the beginning of the year I decided to do some studying. I’ve always been interested in drawing and painting and a friend Arty Vicky told me about a course she has been studying for the last few years. It is through The Learning Connexion and has several different levels you can study. Having done hardly any drawing or painting I have been working my way through the New Zealand Certificate in Creativity Level 4 as a distance delivery student. Or an older term would be correspondence student. That is, I complete the work at home and it is reviewed by a tutor/mentor.
I also chose to do the course part-time over a year rather than for 6 months full-time. This works really well for me as although I can get to the campus doing the study from home fits in with my life better. It’s an average of 3.5 hours five days a week. Of course you can work the hours out however you like so long as each hand-in you’ve completed seventy hours.
It sounds as though it should be easy, 17.5 hours per week, but honestly there were times when I found it difficult to fit it in with all the other claims on my time! I’m nearly there though. All the theory is completed and when I’ve done another seventy-odd hours I’ll have reached the target for the number of hours required. I finish at the end of February so there’s a bit of time left over summer to get those hours done.
I have done some sewing this year but not as much as I usually would. Part of the reason I am doing the course is to up-skill, to be able to draw designs more easily, if needed, for clients. So that has meant my focus has been on creativity in general rather than sewing.
I’m going to share some images of what I’ve been doing. Disclaimer:- I’m at the beginning of learning how to draw and paint so these are the results of some of my explorations in creativity.
One of the tasks is to create with soap using tools. I chose a woodcarving set of tools and carved the soap.
Then I made some prints with the soap. One thing I forgot about was the fact that the word needed to be in reverse/mirror image so it would read the right way round! All part of the learning ?
I sketched this elephant at a series of classes I attended at Karori Arts and Crafts Centre earlier this year, where the tutor for the class I took was Helen Casey. There is much room for improvement but I was pretty happy with my effort.
Another of the tasks for the certificate course is to draw with your feet so this was a 5 minute drawing with my foot with charcoal dust.
The next few photos are of a mock-up skirt for a local dance studio. Last year our girls wore a similar skirt with the short side at one side of their hip. The skirts this year needed to be short at the front and long at the back. Front view . . .
View from the side . . .
And from the back.
Something else I’ve done this year is to mentor a young student with a couple of her projects for school. It is quite fun but also teaches me a lot as I learn how to more effectively communicate ideas and pass on knowledge.
I’ve made Mrs C a couple more dresses. One to the usual pattern . . .
The next had a slight change. No ties at the back, and a single layer more flared sleeve.
Here’s a close up of the sleeve.
There were also a couple of skirts, one from a floral fabric . . .
And one from a mainly paisley print. The floral skirt is opened to it’s full width and the paisley is folded in half.
Another course I took this year was Couture Beading and Embellishment run by Charlotte Appleby. It was something I had been wanting to do for a few years and when the chance came up it was too good to miss!
These are the different techniques we learned over the weekend. It was a challenge but great fun as well.
Lastly a toadstool I made from a cold porcelain soapy clay which I left to dry and then painted.
Just over the last few weeks I’ve been doing a bit more mentor work with a student helping him with a project he is working on. We started with hand stitching and will try sewing with a machine soon.
As well as the dresses above there is the costume I made for a performer and wrote a post about here.
I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at a little of what I’ve done this year. If you’d like to see more there are some other images on my personal blog here.
It is so close to the end of the year that I’ll wish you a very happy New Year and all the best for 2019. I plan on getting more sewing done next year so will try to post more regularly. Fare thee well ?