Hand & Lock Internship: Days 9 & 10

Day 9 was a day of goldwork, unpicking embroideries that needed to be reworked, finishing off a rather exciting celebrity project that I sadly can't write about and searching through the Bead Room for sequins and beads intended for refurbishing a pair of rather exotic baby shoes. No mean feat as I had to match colours and shapes to the existing decorations and given that this is only a portion of the boxes available to look at:

and I had to balance on [another] scary ladder I think I did quite well! I thought it would take me a long time to find the right embellishments but it didn't take too long in the end. I also discovered that although I don't think I'm scared of heights I think I might be scared of ladders?!

Day 10 was probably my personal worst day so far. I've not been feeling very well this week but wanted to push myself to go in to work anyway so as not to let anyone down - especially myself - and to make the most of my short time at Hand & Lock. The main task of the day for myself and another intern was to hand sew goldwork monograms onto velvet blazers (this is not the one I was working on, I forgot to take a photo, but it's from the same job):

First we had to pin them on straight, tack them down and then sew with invisible stitches all around the inner and outer edges; this is where I wish I had a photo of mine as it was more intricate than the above example with a lot more curls and swirls. These had to be partially unpicked and re-done if they were even slightly wonky or in my case, a little bumpy, which set us back but we managed the job in the end. The linings also had to be sewn up by hand and I had of course chosen the one with the biggest seams to be mended; this was where my confidence took the biggest knock of the day. I had to be shown how to do the fell stitching, a process I knew the concept of but had not previously tried and I managed to quite gloriously psyche myself out into another dimension.
Luckily my colleagues at Hand & Lock are unbelievably patient and lovely and helped me out with demos and pep talks galore (and even a hug!), so I feel very lucky to be among not only wonderfully skilled people but also people who can see the bigger picture. I stayed late to help finish the job and they were very grateful for this too, so hopefully I'm showing my enthusiasm to do well in the textiles field.
Again I feel that I am struggling with the desire to work quickly versus the desire to do an impeccable job, but perhaps I am too early on in my training to achieve both and may have to accept the fact that until I am more practised, I realistically may have to sacrifice one or the other; with quality being the obvious option to maintain.