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Monday, March 26, 2012

the wind roars.

This is actually last week's outfit. It's so incredibly windy today. I'm sitting in class, and it's roaring winds outside right now. The type of wind that would carry me away if I were trying to walk outside. It was really sunny when I was outside but cold.

dress and necklace from forever21, pants and jacket from Taiwan, Docs.

This is an outerwear design board from last week for sketching class. The projects for that class are similar to those of apparel design but condensed. We choose inspiration pictures and design a few garments to go with them and that's it. Apparel Presentation, on the other hand, we need to make several boards for inspiration, make a moodboard, develop rough designs, and create a full collection with croquis, flats, and swatches.
I had my apparel critique today and I hope it'll be graded alright. Even when my teacher really likes my work, the highest grade I've ever gotten as of yet is a B.
This collection is based on sculptural silhouettes, technology, and androgynous aspects. I started off with 53 designs that I did, and for our final decision my teacher Gene wanted us to narrow down to 8-10, which was way too difficult, so I did 15. Even 15 as hard. In the critique today, I went first. Gene said only good things about it, except for the floats (which I did instead of flats) being too crowded, which I totally understand because I feel the same way. In total front and back, there are 70 flats, and I stuffed it onto three boards when it should have taken much more room.

A little sleep deprived from working on this project. Deciding between doing homework when I go back after my night class or sleeping.

Love, Kaia

Friday, March 23, 2012

and right now it's just right.

Yesterday's second outfit. It was a little cooler in the morning so I had a different outfit for my morning class, and then switched out to this one in the afternoon when it became really sunny, to go with my parasol.

dress from H&M, skirt from lea market, top from Taiwan, necklace from Forever21, Jeffrey Campbell 99 ties in black suede.
I wear these shoes a lot in my room but I dont wear them out that often because they make my stride shorter and I like to walk fast. But when the weather is really nice and there's time to just walk outside and enjoy the scenery, I like to wear these out.
I wear this outfit really often, but I had an abnormal amount of compliments on it yesterday. In my patternmaking class, my teacher said I was cute and had me lead the class in the critique.

The weather right now is really great!! I don't like warm weather. I get allergic reactions to heat and sun so Summer is not my time of the year. Right now it's just the right degree of warm.

Love, Kaia

Thursday, March 22, 2012

nothing makes me happier than really nice people.

Today was my critique for my patternmaking class. I'm always really nervous for it because I'm not very good at sewing or understanding directions, and patternmaking is a very much sewing based class. I am always afraid of doing something wrong because I don't completely understand it, and when I sew things it's always finished badly and the zipper is off somehow and something doesn't line up and something is caught on something. Always. So critique days are usually the days I dread most. My teacher is very critical about small details.
For our critique today, we presented our dirndl skirts. Before, we would make all of our designs in muslin but starting last week our teacher gave us the option of making our skirts out of fabric, and we had to design it too. Mine is the blue one with the bear face. I was really excited to see everyone's skirts because I think they all came out really nicely. Everyone's gathers were really even and the yokes were all really good. I think everyone had a shaped yoke except for me.

I'm pretty happy with how the skirt came out, and it seems that the work paid off because I had the nicest comments today.
When we do critiques, we all put our garments on a dressform, and after we all examine each other's garments, we pull out the ones we think are the best. Generally only a couple are chosen and we're really nitpicky about everything. Mine usually sits in the back in shame, but this week my skirt was picked out first, by several people. It was really touching.
The inside of the yoke has a floral facing. And inside both of the side seam pockets.
lace trimmed with mint topstitch. I went and bought ten yards of this lace. It was $1 for two yards which is really awesome!
And then there's the bear shaped double patch pocket made out of felt. This pocket makes me happy.

I hope that I will be able to get a decent grade on my skirt. My teacher has never once said anything nice about the garments I've turned in before, but she said today that she loved my skirt and she is really proud of everyone's sewing.
Here's me trying it on before adding on the trims. Everything we make has to be industry standard size 8 (which is the size of all the mannequins we have at school which fits more like a size 4), and I'm really glad that it's not far from my size so I can fit in almost all the things we make in class.

So many things for me to blog about!!!!!! The weather was different from the morning to afternoon so I have two outfits that I could post too.

Love, Kaia

Monday, March 19, 2012

sometimes even i can't catch up with myself.

Everything is always a little hectic. I found these pictures from earlier this month. I don't remember when this outfit was from but I know it was a Wednesday because I specifically wore my velvet pants for our velvet unit in construction class.

black lace tank, Jones NY velvet rose print pants, and Esprit jacket from thrift. Sweater from flea market. Floral Doc Martens.
Wednesdays are one of my busiest days, since class starts in the morning and ends at night, so these pictures were rushed in the 15 minutes before my morning class (and ended up getting to class 5 minutes late, though class didn't start until 10 minutes later).

Sometimes I take outfit posts and never find the time to post them. I try to utilize my time between classes by doing photo editing or shorter assignments during lunch break. I have a number of posts planned that will hopefully by posted soon!

Love, Kaia

Thursday, March 8, 2012

the sun will come out tomorrow.

It was so nice outside today, with temperatures in the high sixties! Today was busy so I didn't get any pictures of today's outfit (I wore shorts today!) but here's yesterday's outfit. It was super nice out yesterday too but not as nice as today so I still needed to wear tights. I wish I didn't because I don't have any light colored tights.
shirt from Tokyo Fashion Co Taiwan, grey cardigan from flea market, handmade collar, H&M dress, tights from Taiwan, shoes from Nordstrom Rack.

Yesterday I took a bunch of spinning shots, and didn't get any good ones but I got so dizzy that I started falling and running into things so I gave up on that.
These tights ripped when I was wearing them yesterday. I was to buy a bunch of stuff from Forever21 (spree!!) but no money. Just a little bit sad. I wish I worked part time sometimes. Alex Wang interned and worked when he was in school. I can't do that. I can barely do just school.
Today is the start of my spring break. There's a lot of things I want to do! But I don't know if I have time to do everything. I want to make a lot of things. So much homework, though. I have two essays that I'd like to get done this weekend, and some projects that need to be finished asap. Hectic as always, but at least I'm working on things that are somewhat fun (it's less fun when you're being graded).


Love, Kaia

Friday, March 2, 2012

lets go on a picnik break.

Finally some photos that aren't heavily edited on picnik. I've been using picnik a lot lately because of the whole shutting down dilemma. I'm sad about that because even though I have photoshop, I often prefer using picnik.

Here's an outfit from a while ago



cat sweater from thrift store. skirt from Charlotte Russe, jeans from Japan, jacket from H&M, shoes from Nordstrom Rack, hat scarf from Brooklyn Chinatown, bag: gift from friend who got it in China.


Generally I think it's supposed to be really cold during this time, but weather has been warm more often than it should. A couple days ago I was wearing shorts (in February in New York. I don't think that's normal).

Last weekend, I painted a sign to put up on my dorm door. It's a picture of my roomie and me riding on my alpaca. I was planning on painting it when we moved in together, but I hadn't really had time on the weekends. Which reminds me, I have my history midterm on Monday...the most dreadful thought in my mind right now. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't all memorization. But it is. So it is that bad.


I'm enjoying my second semester classes more than first. In construction, we aren't making real garments; instead we're learning about different fabric, examining clothes to see how they're made and what kind of seam finishes are used for everything, and then sewing swatch samples of all those finishes out of different fabrics. I have more fun doing that.
Additionally, we've been doing a lot more design. I'm taking apparel presentation this semester, and it's so much work. But that's just the kind of training I need; designing under time constraints. This one is one of three pages of croquis I did this week. I think in total there are 35 designs I did this week. I remember I was struggling just to make 10ish croquis for FIT's portfolio. Those took me weeks to do. Now I draw a page of croquis in 30 minutes to an hour.

I was making a wishlist post this morning, and it was so difficult. In the past, I made on every month so there would always be enough to make a page out of them. But because I haven't made one in so long, the list just got too long. I haven't bought new clothes in months (except for last night's impulse buy...I'll probably post about that when it gets here).

I went through a lot of my old posts today and it made me really nostalgic and sad that I haven't been keeping up with posting. I wish I could post every other day. It's probably not possible, but my goal right now is at least once a week. I'll see if I can make that happen.

Love, Kaia