My main goal this week was to begin the long process of summarizing my research in a way that can be easily presented while also continuing to add facts that I had missed along the way. To start this, I began writing a notable concept post for spinning. I spent a good 4 hours trying to sift through all the information I had to create a post that was both concise and informative and I am still only about half way through writing the post. When I am finished, I would like to have thoroughly covered spinning traditions in the regions that I have spent the most time researching and would like to be able to compare and contrast how they have evolved either separately or with influence from one another.
I also decided to put together two informative posts on certain aspects of traditional dress in order to better illustrate how tradition has made its way into fast fashion – for better or for worse. I decided to cover dress native to the Aran Islands of Ireland and to Rajasthan, India. I felt that throughout my research in traditionally spun wool, I kept being taken back to the Aran Islands – especially with the connection between native tongue and traditional art. Similarly, Rajasthan is one of the top Indian states in khadi cotton production and is now home to a good deal of Western garment factories, so I thought that it would be relevant to narrow in on just that state’s traditions. While I continue to formulate what I know about both of these textile traditions, I am going to expand on what they have become in the present day, how Western industrialization has affected/commodified those traditions, and how that has impacted the sustainability of said traditions.
I think, for the most part, I have finalized my area of research for this quarter, so I will not be looking into any new topics while finishing of the last two weeks of the quarter and am instead going to limit myself to expanding upon and summarizing what I already know in order to make my ePortfolio and conclusions as concise as possible. For week 9, my goal is to finish writing the spinning history post as well as both textile tradition posts and to at least begin writing a final conclusion that ties together all of my experience and findings.