The Weekend and 2/5ths of Critique Week

Saturday morning, I got up early and went in to the studio. I worked on my bag, and wanted to finish it that day. (The original plan was the finish it and then do the neckline and arm-holes of my dress.) It took longer than I had anticipated, because I was using silk for the lining and it was slipping around when I was sewing it up. I eventually got that done and then worked on attaching it to the inside of my bag. The trouble came when I attempted to put the top-side pieces at a certain angle, and it wasn't working. I ended up having to do some sewing on the outside so that no raw edges would appear on the outside. I then spent a few attaching the zipper (my awesome brass zipper).
I finished the bag completely around 5 pm. I decided not to work on my dress that day, since I had been in the lab since around 10 that morning and needed a break that was longer than lunch. So I went back to my room and lounged around, not doing anything too special.
Sunday was another workday. That day, I spent my time painting my beachwear and handbag illustrations for Susan for Tuesday. Seriously. That's all I did. Well, I also put together my Art History presentation on Roy Lictenstein (he's the guy who did the comic-panel paintings, I'm sure you've seen them) coinciding with the Golden Age of comics. But I only spent about an hour on that.
I was boring this past weekend.
Monday started off our lovely Critique Week (I believe I'm the only one who's calling it that, since I'm just that creative). In Sewing, we worked on our dresses the entire time. I started off basting a side seam in preparation for putting in a zipper. Before I finished with this, however, Muriel caught sight of what I was doing and told me that I needed to sew up the side first and then put the zipper in (while I clearly thought it was the other way around). So I sewed it up until the point where the bottom of the zipper would hit, and then began basting the zipper in. In the afternoon section, I finished that and began sewing in the zipper (with my thread that matches the dress). I didn't get too far before it was time for Art History.
In Art History, we all did our presentations. It took longer than usual, because something was wrong with Agnes's computer. (She kept having to restart it whenever we switched using computers.) I eventually presented, and I was just about the only person who didn't read directly off of my slides. (That's partly because I had short-and-sweet bullet points instead of sentences, and I knew my subject matter pretty well, I guess.) After I was finished presenting, Agnes (who was sitting in front of me, while I was using her computer) turned around and told me that I had done a good job and asked me if I had enjoyed researching the topic (to which I replied that, yes, I had).
(Oh, I forgot to add something: That afternoon in Muriel's class, Anne came in. She had told us the previous week that she was going to be teaching draping to a group of students from Missouri, but she would be teaching upstairs. So we were a bit confused as to why she needed to come down to our room. To my surprise, she made a beeline for me at my spot and asked to borrow me for a minute, explaining that a student had asked her a question that she wasn't sure of, and she wanted me to translate. So I followed her upstairs and met the girl, who had a very burning question to ask: no, not one of fashion, but inquiring where to buy hairdryers and straighteners with the proper voltage amount. And here I had worried for a minute that I would be out of my league, not knowing how to translate technical draping terms! So I translated, and Anne answered the question to their satisfaction. Then, one of the girls asked where I was from-maybe thinking that I was European or something, since when I told them that I was American, they seemed a bit surprised. Then, when I went back downstairs, Liz asked what Anne wanted, and when I told her the question, she was like, "They're only here for 10 days, why bother?")
That night, I put together my quilting samples and then went to bed. Again, very boring for the folks at home.
Tuesday was the Susan critique, the most stressful one of the week. Amazingly, we all got to class before it started. (We also beat Susan there, but that was hardly a shock, since that happens every week.) I put my stuff out, and a couple of people told me that they liked my beachwear illustrations. Then Susan came in, and soon realized that she didn't have her glasses with her. She began asking if anyone had their (near-sighted) glasses on them, and if so, could she borrow them for class? As it turned out, she was out of luck, since everyone who had their contacts in that day also happened to be far-sighted. (In the end, she just had to hold everything close to her face and squint.) Then we did the usual thing, of going around to each person's table, looking at their work and listening to Susan's comments. After it transpired that the first couple of people didn't finish their dresses (and she nearly had mini heart-attacks for each), she calmed down since that was the case for everyone save for Ashley and Liz. For me, she wanted to me to attempt to attach the lining of my bag at the one place I was unable to. She loved my flats (as has happened before), and was not too impressed with my illustrations, saying they were too fluid and should be graphic like my flats. (She basically told me just to trace my flats and insert body parts into it, and I'd be fine. So I'll be redoing those before the jury next Wednesday.) She also looked at my dress, and amazingly, did not comment on the crappy craftsmanship. Instead, she focused on my drawing (that I had recycled from the last project, wondering why my dress didn't flow out from the knees like the drawing. I told her that Anne and I had tried to work on it, but apparently it was unsuccessful. (Ashley told me later that it could have appeared to be straight simply because I had it on a hanger and not on the mannequin, which is entirely possible.) After she was done with mine, Tu came up and to me and told me not to worry about my illustrations, since Susan's tough like that, so that was sweet.
When we were done looking at everyone's things, she sent us out so that she could figure out our grades. We ended up staying out there for close to an hour (probably because Susan had to take so many breaks from squinting her eyes). I first talked with Sophia about our French test later that day, and then sat with Liz, Andrea and Rikard for awhile. At one point, I went into the foyer and talked with Tu and Tenzin. (Tenzin had come in late and presented her stuff one-on-one to Susan, so she had seen everyone's work. She told me that my illustrations were really good, that she had seen that I had gotten a 16 or 17-out of 20.)
About 12:10 pm, Susan called us back up to class, and told us that she had taken our grades and that we'd get them at the jury (oh, the suspense...). She told us that we'd all really improved over the semester and that she was very proud of all of us. Then, after saying that we couldn't get anything accomplished in 45 minutes, she released us!
I got back to the apartment and promptly took a nap. After eating lunch, I studied some French and went to take the test. I saw some of our class studying outside, and so I joined them until Nolwenn arrived and we went down to the basement to take the written part of the test. It was pretty straightforward, since we were told exactly what would be on it ahead of time (and, lo and behold, it was all there). It was your basic definitions, writing, grammar and vocabulary. Nolwenn was walking around and looking at whichever part we were working on, and giving us hints if we had gotten something incorrect. About halfway through the test, she told us that a section she had previously told us not to do would be extra credit. This section was a written section where we used the vocabulary for love and imagined a love-at-first-sight scenario. Nolwenn had written "like Nicholas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni", so I decided to take a stab at that particular one. I wrote that Nick met Carla at a state ceremonie, and he fell in love with her while dancing with his wife Cecilia. Later, he asked his good friend Dominique Villepin (also the mayor of Paris) to introduce them, and he knew from then on that his life was changed. They got married in February 2008, but only after he divorced Cecilia. (I kind of amused myself writing this. Incidentally, while I was writing part of this, Nolwenn was reading my page over my shoulder. I wasn't sure if she was reading that section or the one before it, but I was still amused.) After we were all finished, we went outside for the oral part. We discussed the new gay marriage law in California, and some good points were brought up. Nolwenn also asked Doha the story of how she came to remove her hijab, and she told us that she had been thinking about it for awhile and then just decided to go through with it after talking it through with her husband and some other people. So that was cool.
After class, I went to Gibert Joseph, and picked up that macaroon cookbook I'd been wanting for awhile. (I was just in time, since it was the last one!) I also got a tart citron to eat for dessert. It was another boring night of work for me. I finished drawing up my sketches for Jen's accessories project. (I still have to paint in my Yohji sketches, as well as make my clutch bag.)
For those interested in keeping score at home (and winning fabulous prizes!), here's the rest of the schedule for Critique Week: Wednesday is Sewing (Muriel looks at how well-made to haute-couture techniques our dresses are), Thursday is Pattern and Draping (Anne looks at our dress, our costume sample with an added decoration, and our notebook of technical samples) and Friday is Stylism (Jen looks at our accessories project, which consists of drawings of bags and shoes, as well as our made bag. This is in addition to whatever Yohji corrections we had. For me, this includes the 15 sketches and "volume study", which is everything for that project.).
Should be fun.