Textile Design, Making & Application

Textile Design, Making & Application is the name of our new FdA assignment brief.  This is a twelve week project split into three mini projects, the overall theme is TRAVEL.  The first brief is based on the theme of 'Planning and making a journey' and we need to create textiles for interior fabrics and constructions for the home.  I chosen to go with the non print option of fabric manipulation and construction.  Have based my travel kit on my metaphorical journey, discovery of ancestral relics and my planning surrounds the bits and pieces we have in the house that were owned and belonged to family generations before us.

Portfolio Images

I really must get used to updating my blog on more regular basis, rather than every fortnight!  I've just been photographing my samples to support my CV application for my industry placement in April, and these are the images I have selected:

Circles and Spheres

I've finally handed in my first technical submission, 36 pieces of print, stitch and knit based on my three words Urban, Fragile and Trapped.    The collection came together with a lot of re-arrangement of the order of the samples, still a bit lacking on the colour front, with not enough continuity; and possibly too many themes are covered (we'll see if that comes up in the feedback).  I feel the print is my greatest area for development; for the knit I learnt the most with new stitches and techniques and for the stitch I hope that the samples demonstrate my ability to experiment and challenge my own abilities.  I gave up photographing all of the final samples but here are some of the stitches circles, made from charity shop garments, using multiple fabrics to create layers and 3D effects:

Bobbles and Mini Poufs

I've been stitching and knitting all over the Christmas holidays and most of my January submission is nearly complete.  For the hand knitting I've been experimenting with ways of creating more surface texture by using different knit techniques as well as mixing different yarns and attaching fabric strips and ribbons to the knitting.   

I've been hand knitting using an adapted Little Butterfly stitch, Daisy stitch, clusters, couching and intarsia to create samples in line with my themes of windows and spiders.  Playing around with scale and 3D ideas, I've knitted some mini poufs inspired by some of the pattern ideas from the fantastic Norwegian website www.pickles.no (who are even are kind enough to translate all of their patterns into English too!).

Machine knitting is still continuing well too.  I've re-visited one of my initial pieces and knitted it again in colours that are more in line with the rest of my samples, with the intention of creating more of a collection, rather than pieces that don't look as if they belong together.  This is a mass of small rectangular machine knitted pieces between 6 and 20 stitches wide, some short and fat, others skinny and long all knitted in various 3ply or less yarn.  Then they have all been individually attached to a second piece of machine knit to create a mass of knit.  I've intentionally left the cast on / cast off yarns attached which fall naturally together.

Bobbles

End of term is in sight!  Today I've been working hard on my final selection of stitch samples ideas and I've been creating stitch swatches, testing out my thoughts and fabrics.  All appears to be going well, the samples look related to both the print and knit; so with a bit of luck there will be some continuity when I submit this project in the new year for review.  Living room is covered in black and grey fabric, fluff and threads.  My last personal date for machine sewing is the 16th December when I finally give in for Christmas and will clear the decks for the tree and festive stuff.  Still hand knitting though, I finished this bobble sample last night and I've now started my intarsia house knit.

Knobbly Spiders

Whilst I'm on a blogging roll, I thought I'd add an update of some of my machine knit experimentations.  It's been years since I used a knitting machine and I have to say that I am just loving it!  I had a not so friendly and rather camera shy spider living in the garage and he inspired me to attempt to create some knobbly knitting:

What can you do with three words?

I've been very remiss and not updated my blog since starting Uni.  Its all been a bit full on to say the least and I've been settling in and working on designated projects and visual exploration through my three allocated words:

• FRAGILE
• URBAN
• TRAPPED

I've been exploring ideas associated with houses, roofs, windows and doors, spiders, cobwebs, ellipses and diamonds amongst other things.  I've been working on Textile Visual Studies, exploring visual language as well as an introduction to Textile Techniques: having now completed screen printing workshops, knitting - hand and machine (and I liked it so much a bought a machine thanks to Ebay!) and of course, my favourite stitching.  Fantastic inspiration by guest speaker Alison Willougby http://www.alisonwilloughby.com/ has totally inspired me and I've been encouraged to do some hand sewing by the girls.  So I've now created a long list of ideas to choose from.   We've got a big hand in after Christmas for print, knit and stitch.  I've finished my print, having established that I will never be a printer, but here is my most successful print, hand painted procion dye onto fabrics.