Evaluation of the Practice Unit..

To seek inspiration for my projects I tend to dig deep and look into my personal life: whether it’s taking a trip back home to the fresh air and beauty of my surroundings; taking photographic evidence of everything I see or just simply unpicking the favorite things in my life. Colour choice and style becomes a huge part of this, as the things I design and make become representative of me and what I feel strongly about. I like to dream and live big!
I see life in colour, pattern and texture. My work is bright and vibrant and full of possibility; my ideas link from one to another and try  I to tell a story; I like my work to become a journey. I look for  beauty in everything around me; picking the positive path reflects strongly within my work. I will continually return to this in my next unit.

 
My objective with this project was to ‘find myself’ and to figure out my textile purpose. I also wanted to try out a wide variety of new techniques to stretch and test myself. The title of the ‘Practice’ unit has been very close to mind since I first began in September. My range of new techniques include the following: 

 

•    Reconstructing my warp (I.e. tying in different yarn to give my sampling a different quality)

 

•    Piece acid dying to my woven sampling in the Dye Lab

 

•    Discharge printing to woven sampling in the Print Room

 

•    The Tufting Embroidery Machine

 

•    Flocking and layering to my sampling

 

•    Iron on transfer samples

 

•    Digital Printing

 

•    A much wider variety of yarn testing

 

•    Structure testing when on the loom 

 

•    Distorting my sampling when off the loom, by brushing, teasing and embellishing. 

 

Not all of these skills have been the success that I had hoped and the picture in my mind’s eye of the direction I saw my work going did not always go to plan. Learning new processes has been fun and exciting and have all played a massive part in the final outcome of this unit.

 
My Self-Initiated samples are my least favourite out of my four submissions. I found that I didn’t appreciate how long each process would take for me to complete, and my time management became a little tricky - clearly this is a stepping stone on the learning curve for me. I’ve learnt much about where I want the final part of my degree to go and I will be replacing my piece dying with a much tidier process of dying and will keep both my warp and my weft separate allowing me to weave much stronger sampling. As I’ve fallen In love with much of my ‘artist research’  I will carry on using their influence to inspire me in the future.

 
The outcome of this unit is that I have dramatically improved my art direction skills as well as beginning to realise my potential and direction of where I could go next. Interior Design is still my aspiration as all my projects are suited to this industry. I’ve learnt that heavy structures aren’t for me, and simple yet effective designs will be my way forward.

 

Micheal Kidner- Week four..

Very Pleased with my outcome for this project, in my opinion the most successful out of the Practice Unit. My Collection of samples are tailored for high end upholstery specifically for Chair Coverings.

 

 

Micheal Kidner- Week Three..

My cotton warp is just the base of my designs. With a clear structure to my ideas, using only three main colours, I created a large collection of samples focusing on four structures; plain, satin, sateen and floating weaves. I quickly found that the satin and sateen structure were working best, and as I wasn’t dying this collection, I wanted to keep a clear theme that would run through the Practice unit. This is something that I could develop on into my next unit. I thought that tying in my ends would be the perfect example, as this was a newly developed skill that I really enjoyed putting into practice. As I began to weave and experiment with my designs, an unplanned pattern began to form. The tension may have been a bit too tight, and the weave pulled together to create what reminded me of a cactus form. This really interested me and was something that I decided to develop within the unit, as well as the more structured samples.

 

 

Micheal Kidner- Week Two..

As the design to Michael Kidner’s print is very block structured, it was vital that both my drawing and my sampling reflected this. I started off by cutting out square and rectangle shapes from coloured card that linked with my colour palette. I then placed them into different compositions working on proportion and scale. This then led to a clear direction of what structures I wanted to do when I was on the loom, as well as a clearer idea of what was working and what wasn’t working so well. The sampling was very different to my usual designs but ones that I found I really enjoyed, maybe more than all my previous projects. I think this could be a way forward for my work in the future. 

Before going onto the loom I wanted to do some thorough artist research, here I came across Claude Monet, I found much inspiration from his colour palette and soft style of his piece “Water Lilies" dabbled style of painting and casual brush strokes give a relaxed and loose feel to the piece. Monet inspired me to brand new ideas from yarn choices, i.e with soft qualities like mohair and more colour inspiration.

Micheal Kidner- Week One..

Every project that has made up the Practice unit has been inspired by one of my own photographs taken last Summer. The image I selected for ‘Micheal Kidner' was more toned down than the three previous ones, but perfectly related to the chosen Kidner painting I had been studying. This image was the beginning of where I saw my work going; When I stripped down the colours from my photograph, I found that they were very similar to the Kidner painting, What I thought would be a more toned down colour palette proved me wrong as my work really started to come alive when I began to put it all together.

 

 

Dash and Miller- Week Four..

In addition to my small, intricate collection of samples, I created an A3 body of work alongside an on
going developing sketch book; the story of my journey from start to finish. Here I portrayed my colour palette and media, as well as my drawing and mark making skills, unpicking my thoughts and ideas behind my weaving and artist research. The rich tones of colour make up the base of my work, with layers of gold glittered sparkles on top, the same as my woven designs, adding a new dimension to my work.

 

 

 

My Small Collection of Samples will be tailored for high end Interior specifically suited to edging and boarders of Interior Décor.