Scarlet Letter and Juno Creative Piece amillatt

The themes I emphasized in my project were societal judgment and public vs private. I basically created a blanket, one side represents the negative thoughts of society about Juno and Hester and the other side represents each characters positive qualities. My idea for this piece was to show how society can sometimes cover up a persons inner good with their harsh words and actions. I tried to make the design speak for itself and not have to write anything more than adjectives. On the societal judgment side, I made the background black and I put a large scarlet letter in the middle. The adjectives are written in black and red sharpie and in capital letters. The reason for the black background and the black and red sharpie is that this side is the darker side of society, the more harsh and cruel side.  I wanted to write the words in capital letters because I feel like society is yelling it at these two girls or making it so obvious about the two characters decision that it is like yelling. Lastly I created the scarlet letter to represent that side because society judged the physical aspects of each character (Hester the Scarlet Letter and Juno the baby bump). Some of the words used on the blanket were “ Hussy, Harlot, Immature, whore and irresponsible.”  because people in both the book and movie associated the characters and real people in their situations with these words.

            For the other side of the blanket, I took a completely different approach. I decided that I wanted this side to show the great quality that each character has on the inside. I made the background bright yellow and the words are written in different colors because I wanted the audience to see the positives and know that this side represent the good. I created a heart and sewed that in the center of the project because the heart represents something that is covered, but still the most important part of you. Those aspects of the characters are covered or ignored by society because of their situation, but they are still important. Some the words I decided to use were “caring, passionate, wise and forgiving” because I thought these words were applicable to Juno and Hester.

            The first step was o go to the thrift store and by all the components: blanket, yellow sheet, white sheet, red fabric, shapies etc. Then I came up with the words I wanted to use by looking at my notes from the Scarlet Letter and Juno.  After that I cut out pieces like the heart and “A”. Lastly I sewed everything myself on the blanket. The project took about 7 hours in total to complete because it did take a while to sew on the A and the heart. The only issue that I had was sewing because I hadn’t sewed something so large since I was 10 years old. My fingers were also soar after hold the needle for such a long period of time.

            The part of the project I feel that I did well on was the idea behind the project. I thought that it was different from the projects that we did in class and the ones that my peers were creating. I wanted to make my project different, which I did. The only aspect I want to improve on it the aesthetic part. I imaged it would look ten times better in my head, I felt like if I had another week I could have spent more time perfecting the minor errors. I am not saying I hate my blanket, but there are some parts that I wish I could have fixed.

            If I had to do this exact project again I would have changed a few parts of the original design. First off I would have made the blanket longer so that I would fit more words on it. I would have also added some pictures from the movie and some cartoons of the book because I feel like it would have added something different to my project. Lastly I would have added more detail, like have a colored border around the words because that would have made it more visually appealing. To conclude I enjoyed working with both Juno and the Scarlet Letter, they are both timeless pieces that I teach our generation a lot.