So first semester was basic Clothing Construction, and Basic Fashion Art & Design, Textiles, and Tailoring 1. The first three were 8 week long classes, the last one was my night class that lasts the entire semester.
Because of my past experience with sewing, clothing construction consisted of me doing my work and then ditching class for the rest of the period and coming back to pick up my stuff lol. I had Osuna and felt her education on this was fine, although again I already knew what I was doing with this.
*side note - I have industrial sewing machines at home so this also advantaged me. A lot of time was spent early on in the class familiarizing everyone with the machines. If you're considering this class, know that my experience will not be universal.
In the middle of that first eight weeks there was a sudden fashion show for Black History Month which I was promised footage from but never received. Ah well. Not sure that Ash would permit me to post them online. Each designer/sewist was given a dress made of wax print/ankara/etc (I can never remember the name) and asked to rework it into something new. I took mine and turned it into a yoked suspender skirt complete with a secondary lining of a coordinating lightweight fabric. Ash got a petticoat to go with it and it swishes very nicely.
I was pretty proud of that and it's been my only achievement this year as far as clothing for Ash. Will get to that later.
Second eight weeks was fashion art and design and it was pretty bad. I couldn't keep up even with intense tutoring from Ash and from an art teacher friend of mine. Barely squeaked by. Some of this is on me, some of this is on the professor. I also had Osuna for this. She skipped a lot of really basic drawing stuff like teaching about values, colors, etc. Didn't teach anything about design principles. Kind of left us to the wind and focused too much on drawing croquis and getting perfect ink lines on our technical flats. Honestly it was a bad experience and I would never recommend this professor for this class especially seeing this semester what students in the other professors' versions of this class have been doing. Lots more general education for people like me with only vague art knowledge. Disappointing.
Textiles was also with Osuna and it was fine I guess. Lots of hands on projects to conceptualize what a textile is. Felt a little high school level rather than college level, but I think that's because this was Textiles rather than Textile Science. Ah well. I ditched a lot of it for the fashion show if I recall correctly. I made friends there though, who have stuck with me through this semester too.
Now, Tailoring 1 was great up until I had to drop about 75% through the semester with a W because I was so behind on my homework in both classes that I couldn't keep up anymore. I was pretty bummed about that at the time. I'll cover why I'm no longer bummed in a future post.
In tailoring 1 we were to make 2 separate vests. I got the first vest done (I'll look for photos and post them eventually) and then the second vest I got it cut out and then didn't get to actually sew it. It's in a bag somewhere, I'll finish it eventually. Hope the moths stay out of it. Ongoing struggle.
So that was my first semester. Two A's, a C, and a W. Not bad. Could have been better for sure. But I'm glad that's over.
