Unit X Post 3

Wires from Blackpool Illuminations 

When creating my samples for weave I wanted to create something very bold and with block colours. Then I came across artist Wayne Thiebaud, who inspired me with his bright and colourful painting. Within his paintings you can extract stripe qualities, I find that this work fits well within my own work, so concluded that painting or interpreting things in this style has been very useful.

Wayne Thiebaud

Below illustrates the way in which I cut my photos into stripes and organised them to make patterns, I feel that doing this was very useful, as it created a vivid image in my head of how I could translate my photos into patterns within my weave.

During the many weeks of unit x, weave as a group have had many tutorials and critiques, to help us look at our work and see what is working well and not so well for everyone. I really feel that these have been useful, I think that sometimes within my work and I can get caught up in what I am doing, and ignore some of the elements that have been working well at the beginning. Therefore these tutorials and critiques help me to look at my work as a whole, and see what links I can make from the start of the unit to were I am currently working.

Striped Photos 

During this unit I came across a hurdle, as I was not achieving the look that I was hoping for, so I took a trip to Maplins and purchased some thick bold wires, finding that when I brought these into my work I was gaining the bold statement that I had hoped for. Though when I started to do this, I soon realised that my work and techniques were looking very similar to Artist Designer Elizabeth Ashdown, with the hooped thick threads though my weft. So to move away from this, I brought back in some of the old techniques that I had used on my older samples, which captured the marks and textures from my photos from Blackpool, such as the 'warp rib' technique, capturing the circular marks within my photos of light bulbs. Bringing these techniques into my work, rather than getting carried away with what looks pleasing to the eye, brought the meaning and everything from the start of the unit back to the final samples. 

A Final Weave Sample

During Unit X, I believe that I have gained a good understanding and knowledge of weaving. I have enjoyed the unit overall, though I feel that my starting point was not amazing, and focusing on wires did not really give me a good bases to collect drawn research from, so I could of done with looking at everything from a different perspective, such as drawing in a larger scale and cutting the detail marks from these. I really enjoyed my chosen colour scheme, as I think it is very bold and vibrant, I found this very fun to work with. 

If I was to start this brief again, I would  go out and collect more research, as I really feel like this is what has let me down. I still have many ideas to continue this topic on,  and have lots of things to experiment with when weaving. For example,  even thicker wires and bolder colours in my pallet, I also think it would be interesting to make my own wire by adding thread to them on the sewing machine. This would make the wires themselves more colourful and interesting,  rather than them being just a single plain colour. I think this technique for me has a lot of potential, which I feel very positive about.

A Final Weave sample

Due to the fresh look of my samples, I feel that they would be best suited for interior, preferably in a kitchen, as they are very clean and vibrant looking. The samples I have created, I do not feel, shout out a particular area of context, though if in the right use could be used as fashion, or perhaps fashion accessories and garment edging.

Unit X Post 2

After being many places and gathering research to start my project, I first started to create my colour palette, I find this helpful as a starting point, and at this time we were starting to think about warp designs, so thinking of a colour scheme was a good idea as this helped me in the decision process. 

Colour Pallet  

The quality that really enticed me to this area was the chaos which was of all the wires tangled together, but yet the order in the block colours of the cords themselves. I found it very hard to translate my photos into drawings focusing on texture, and then to translate this to weave, but did what I could and found that actually slicing up the photos into strips really helped, and taking the qualities directly out and onto the loom. I felt that I did really struggle with the drawing in my sketchbook but found it easier drawing with the weaving. 

Wires from Blackpool Illuminations 

I really liked the order within my work, and this structure came through in my drawings too. I had started weaving and leaving strands as I liked the effect of this and it reminded me of typical passementerie, but this is not what my work was about, so I moved away from this and thought a more controlled and considered edge said more about my work and style. I thought of having tassels but cut very sharp and straight, however when playing around with ideas I found that I much preferred having a continuous pattern running through my weave and having the wires appearing through, creating something lovely outside the weave, a continuous pattern.

I wanted to capture the chaotic nature of the piles of wire through my choice of yarns, so using a flat and slightly shimmery yarns, and incorporating wires in my own work. I have been using these methods, but have not been seeing the results I had hoped for. My samples are more toned down than they should be, and the wires seemed to be too thin and fragile for what I was tying to achieve. Also a few of my samples were looking too similar to tea towels, due to the lack of stability in them and the softness of the yarns. So I needed to get thicker wires, and some bolder, more vibrant yarns, and avoid the typical checks. 

Lights within the illuminations

Simple translation for weaving the pattern

Here I am showing how I have continued to translate the research I had gathered at the beginning of the project, these sorts of  marks I have brought into my weaving create very structured pieces, taking into consideration the linear marks both vertical and horizontal.

Warp Decision Making

When deciding on what warp to make, I wanted to go with colours that were within my colour pallet, these were all mostly vibrant colours, but I wanted to achieve a less saturated look, so I selected more toned down versions of my original colours. This meant that I could experiment with brighter colours in my weft, and not be overwhelmed by the brightness of the warp. So far with my weaving it has been successful, but I am certainly finding out what I like the look of and what I do not. I am finding the method very time consuming as I have been used of knitting, and find that with knitting you can produce samples very quickly, but with weaving, not so much. This is good as it means planning out what you are going to do next is more important, as it is going to take time, but I am finding that if something is not going well, I am not fast enough at it that I can get enough samples done, and refine them.