Two hours makes difference

School is much closer and I can stay school until 8. Once thing I really have to complain about Chelsea is that they close their studio too early...
They open school around 8:30am and close at 8 pm. My school in NYC opens until 2 am. and opens like 7am. computer lab is 24 hours other then Saturday. Also, I can come in both sat/sun. Here in Chelsea, I can only stay until 8 pm and school is closed on Sunday. Sat is until 4pm.
I like staying school and work until 10 am or sometimes later then that but I cant do that here;(
I like working in studio, and I like working on my loom.

I wish I could stay until 10... I can do so much more in that extra 2 hours.
Since its almost Nov and our project due is in 3 weeks and my friend is coming to visit from Germany and my boyfriend is also come and visit me during Nov, Im trying to finish as much as I can do now.

Working style

I forgot about how Chelsea has different style of course schedule compare to my school in NY!

There are classes scheduled Monday to Friday and we have to show up to classes and show our attendance. We can choose some courses but most of times, we have to follow the time schedule school gives us every semesters.
And these courses that we take are 4 to 5 different courses, like one weaving course, one painting course, one screen printing course etc...
So there are different projects assign us each courses, ending up we are working on 4 or 5 different project at once.
But here in Chelsea, There are not much time like those classes.
We do have lectures every week for 3 hours, and we do have meeting with our tutor about 20 mins or group meeting once in a week. But that about it, no time schedules that we have to follows. There are 2 lectures classes and 1 project.

I'm getting used to new daily routine, and I like how I have control over on how I plan and schedule what I wanna do each day.
I like staying studio, because I can concentrate more. Also, I need to be school since our looms or yarns are all in school. so lately, my schedule is walking to school around 9:30ish and get to school 10:00ish,then eat breakfast and plan on the day, then work and lunch and work until school. close.

I'm happy about how I can only think about and work on few project and only for weaving here.I feel like I can think more for the project unlike I was getting crazy in New York with too many projects going on.

Victoria and Albert museum

I moved in to new Place :)

School is much closer and a brown stripy cat is my new roomie at home now.
she liked my packing bag and giving me company while I was unpacking my stuff lol


Sunday is totally off for me, so usually I meet up with group of girls from programs at night for dinner or drink.
But I wanted to go to this museum from while ago, so I went to visit museum before I meet girls.

Victoria & Albert museum

one of the reason why I wanted visit here was because they have original works of william morris.

and of course many of textile that has been used for home are displayed too.





I like art museum in general, but I actually enjoyed this museam more the any other museum. I think it might be it close to what I wanna do?
industrial design and design for everyday life.... that where I wanna go.

I also was interested in iron works that has been display... some new inspiration here


I like how they have panels to give us explanation of techniques at time or history of works.


and of course fashion.

my favorite designer Ossie Clerk's work was there too.. I love his dresses and textile from Celia Birtwell too.... 60's is my fab!


my new favorite place in London

Thinking Thinking Weaving....

Work in Progress...

Weaving Studio around 8, no body... lol


some painting works for thinking about design


using computer to help designing too


new designs....




My head is all about weaving weaving now......!!

Getting used to London

Time goes real fast, it already 3rd week of October.
I'm getting used to go to school. a little by little.
As I wrote last time, I'm together with small group of people, so its easy to getting know people too ;)

Good news is that I found new place to stay!
Right now, I live in south harrow, which is Zone 5...
I didn't know there are such a thing "Zone" exist in London.
There are no zones in New York subway system. So, I didn't think this Zone 5 could be expensive. Anyway, the new place is about 40 min walking distance or I can take a bus to school too.
Since autumn in London is milder then New York, I think I can walk to school.

And they have a cat in new place(I share an apartment with a couple) I would also like that too.

warp setting and start to weave

Setting up warps are always hectic work for me.

Since project theme is mexico, my warp is colorful
I like how they turns out.

First time to dye yearns, cotton and linen. They took dye differently.



dyed yarns


yarn winder (might be different name lol)
we don't have this machine in my school




tada~~~~~



then, start to setting then into dobby loom, not much fun in this part but well... might be important to pay attention, because if I made mistake, I have to redo.....





First sample....


Getting to the point where we can start weaving is always, always hardest part!!

Sustainable design

There are other lecture on Friday.
This is called Tops and Student choose what they wanna study from several different theme of lectures. The tops not mandatory for exchange student, but there are interesting lecture called sustainable design. I went few times when I have time.

The tutor gave us some of sustainable design activities and products example.
I was amazed by there are people who is try to do both of making profits yet sustainable.

I studied fashion design and garment construction in my previous education in Tokyo.
So I love idea of the Northface zero waste project.

David Telfer (His HP)

and the tutor showed us other examples like Eco chair form, and weaving technique that fabric pattern woven on the loom so the there are no wastes. Big companies like Muji and Puma is also trying sustainable designs within their package design or having exhibitions.

I always have interest in sustainable design, because textile industry is place where design and create materials or products. those products ultimately became waste or depose someday when those are getting old or out of style and not functional anymore.
But resource from the earth is limited, and the problems comes with consuming will be bigger and bigger in future. This problem should always be inside of my mind, since I want to keep creating materials.

A lots of thought and idea. Not yet seeing great way to slove how I will contribute to the world or sustainability design but I really want to keep in my mind and be part of the activity of sustainable design.

Start to making warps

For this terms, all of students form different discipline is working on same theme, which is MEXICO.

Seems like some student got email about the theme.
I didn't get any, and I think the operation of sharing information in Erasmus student program is not great. I did get any emails about how to check UAL email and account, and some email was missing too. Anyways, problem is that I didn't have much time to do research on this theme. I did gather what inspire me from pictures of Mexico. But I just wish I had more time to develop more concept and ideas.

In Weaving discipline, there are only 8 students out of 90 something student in textile course. I like how group is small and we can share ideas and thoughts together.
this week, we are start to dyeing warps and preparing for making warps.

We don't have dying lab in FIT(NY) so we have never learn how to dye fabrics or yarns.
It might sounds weird we don't do it even though we are in textile design major. I think it is all about how FIT is focus on educating students to be designer. Once we became designer, we never dye fabrics or yarns, we only check Lab dips or samples. So, we did learn about those. I personally like how my school is trying to teach only practical things, but on the other hand, I'm also happy about I have a chance to learn dying and more hand on type of textile approach in Chelsea too.

First lecture.

First color lecture this week was really interesting.

Every Tuesday, there are the lecture about color and design. (not yet fully understand if this lecture is always about colors or textile?
I wouldn't write everything about lecture (because it was so much to cover!) but little bit about what i found interesting in her lecture...

Anyways, the first lecture was about talking a lot about black.
How black has been conceptualized and history behind of it.




First of all. black was associated with non present of human life, or representing something people should scared of, so Black was associated with kind of fair for people.

Then, 17 to 18 century
Black was one of most difficult color to dye in fabric
So wearing black was luxury and black was used as ''show off'' their wealth and power.
Also mind and body is separate, The idea of Newtons era emerged around this time too.

The story of color black goes to how black was not color for women, and muscle but yet little black dress was introduced by Channel (however, this introduction may not just been from Channel) and talking about even 80's Rei Kawakubo.

Professor was observing many different perspective in black.
In the end, black can mean everything, because it has refers to so many things.






Super interesting way to learn meaning of colors and history of fashion/ textile and also arts!! I felt huge differences of how I have learned. I have studied in Fashion in Tokyo and Textile in New York. So I have learned history of fashion and textile and art history over and over yet, it was nothing like in Chelsea.

In Bunka fashion college (which is in Tokyo)
We went though Textbook and how Fashion was started from ancient and how it has meaning but more like giving students to knowledge about how to call the garment pieces or what was wear in what era. Nothing to discuss about, more about it has been like that and this style was popular.
Professor sometimes gave us background about why the style was popular at time from context but that was pretty much it.

In FIT (which is in NYC)
There were two courses I needed to take for learning history of textile. Both of them were textile history and both understanding and learning different method of making textiles. How I learned textile history in here was somewhat more close to how I learned in Bunka, but still following and memorizing what is what.

However, there are few required art history classes to learn art and context of the times. This was something close to lecture at chelsea. Professors discuss and question about art and history, also politics too.

Here in Chelsea, Professor was talking about history and culture and politics, popularism and so much more, and bringing or opening discussion about color.
I really liked how she brought up color (this time specifically black) means just not color.
she also did not give us generalization of color (like we see in one of those color theory books) talking about history of usage and discussing about the color with trend and fashion and even more.

Still there are a lot to learn and interesting way to learn about textile.
Happy to be here, and lucky to be able to learn something I love.

As Uni starts...

Since I'm in textile design major I needed to choose one discipline out of 5 disciplines.
such as...

Print(screen printing)

Digital printing

Weaving

Knitting

Stitch


In my school, there are no disciplines or specialization, so I have studied pretty much all of them.
Only stitch is the one  we don't do.I was thinking to take something I can't study in my school. 

When I saw the facility, I felt like screen print studio is small and there are not much computers for students for digital printing. I've already took 4 or 5 courses of screen printing and same for digital printing. However, weaving studio has some looms that my school don't have. I thought knitting would be nice too, but I have more interest in home furnishing so decided to take weaving as my discipline. I did not see so much point of taking stitch, since it was more fine art type of approach to fabric. I think it is interesting but I like bit more traditional type of approach to textiles.

I'm excited to weave more here in London!