End of Unit Evaluation

Starting Point Photo 

Looking back over the unit of 'Intentions', I feel like I have really developed my practice, specialising in knit. I have found it overall very exciting. I have really enjoyed my starting point using mostly Acrylic and watercolours to capture the beautiful landscapes of my holidays over the summer. And then using my knowledge on the domestic knitting machines and new learnt techniques on the Dubied to translate these into knit. Working with the context I chose allowed me to be very experimental, and really push myself to doing things I had never done before, this involved working in a more sculptural/ three dimensional way.

Development Photo

Development into Drawing

Knit I feel worked very well for my context of sculptural fashion as it allowed me to successfully produced detailed textured samples, that I can envisage as a fashion garment. The way I captured condense ripples with blocks of bold colours I feel is very striking and could be on the runway. I feel that I had planned out my samples well when it came to refining my ideas, this meant that I used my time efficiently.

Final Sample

I have found that during the unit, learning the new techniques on the dubied is what has worked most successfully. I feel that I have picked it up very easily and quickly and am kean to learn more and get much better on them.  I also have discovered that I have found it a little easier to translate my drawing into knit this unit, though am still not a completely confident, I have myself felt an improvement. For example, in my knit samples I have focused my work on the theme of capturing movement, so my drawings turned more abstract  than literally drawing what I saw. This then helped me to think of ways that I can move these drawings into knit. As they were more about a quality than an object. I then started to play around with form, using materials like bin liner, so that I could see exactly the shape and textured that I wanted to achieve on the machines.

Final Sample

There has been many hurdles during these few weeks which I have had to overcome, something that I found did not work so well is my context. Though During the unit I have done a lot of research.  My research has been towards installations. As the unit has unravelled it seems that my knit samples have not developed enough in the direction of creating something suitable for a space, though if I had more time this may be more visible, but as the unit did not last too long, it was not so clear. So this forced me to look more into fashion as a context, and feel that this works very well. My knit samples are very three dimensional and textured which I feel fits well in the fashion world, as a catwalk garment.

If I had time to continue with this project, I would love to see it go larger, and see how the linear marks within my work really become movements. and I would like to experiment more with manipulating the shape of the knit. causing more three dimensional shape.

Final Week

Painting from Visual Research

During the final week it is really about bringing my samples together to make them look like a complete collection. This involved me looking at they all as a group, making sure nothing was missing, the colour balance was correct, that there was not too much of one colour or too little of another.

Final Samples with Foil

During the beginning of this unit I had used tin foil to capture the shimmer in water  synthetically. This I had moved into foiling, but had not really pushed it, though in these last few weeks had experimented with it on my knit samples, and found that it does in fact work very well and that this brings back that shimmer I was capturing at the beginning, and that was a main focus.

Final Sample with Foil 

Context

Punk: Chaos to couture

In today's tutorial, it was suggested that my collection of knit samples has a fashion element to them, and though I have been thinking and having a instillation theme in mind, I have always been making reference to fashion also, and now think that this is more suited. Though the knits have a fashion element, I will not let go of the three dimensional quality and enthusiasm. So the garment designs in mind for my samples will be very sculptural, creating movement on the body.

Here are to examples of catwalk designs that have captured my interest. They have caught my interest specifically because they are very over the top fashion, and not something that would be worn for everyday wear.

This I feel is were my knit samples could bee used, made larger scale and loosely hung on the body.

Sister to Sibling

Refining ideas

This week's tutorial was very helpful. As I have worked out what it is I am trying to achieve, I am finding that I am now refining my final ideas and techniques to get the best outcomes.

Final Sample

In this week's tutorial it was suggested that I focus a little more on the colours I am using, as within my drawings the colour has been very important and has been a lot of variety of blues gradually changing shades, to create depth. This I feel I can get more accurate within my knit, as I have done a lot of colour study this unit. I feel I can achieve this by carefully selecting yarns and using more shades, but colour even try dying my yarns, though this is a great idea I feel I do not have enough time to try this out this unit. Though a quicker way to achieve this would be to paint directly onto my knits, so this is something that I will try out.

Final Sample

During this week I will be continuing to experiment with ideas, but begin to pick out what is working well, like ripple, plating and push them forward by combining techniques. 

Refining Work Week 3

When doing some research I came across this piece, I was captured by this piece because of its form. This got me thinking of ways that I can get my flat samples to appear to have more form and three dimensional shape. I thought that this could be through adding wire into my samples afterwards, or even bedding wire into my knit samples or knitting with a yarn that will hold its shape.

Ann- Kirstin Abel TEXTILE FUTURES

In the below photo I have embedded wire into my knit sample, so that it enables me to when cast of, start to manipulate its shape and form.  This I feel is working very well, especially contrasting this with ripple on the domestic, as it makes to linear marks look as if they are swaying, though this is just the wire moving them.

Sample experimenting with wire in knit 

Close up of same technique

Refining Work Week 2

This week I have been getting used to using the Dubied Machine, I feel as though I am getting better at it the more I practice and am slowly finding ways to translate my images and drawings into knit. This week I have be using techniques like racking and ripple mostly to try and capture the waving movement in my drawings, and using ripple to add textures. Though feel that the hook up technique on the domestic machine is working well and would be good if I could combine the two, this could be achieved if I transfer the knit and swapped in to a different machine.

Capturing texture of water 

Transfer to knit

Also it was suggested that though I am trying to achieve an organic look within my work, it would be nice to show the more structured designs along side the organic ones. Though could do both these in one samples which I have found are qualities within my drawings, that there is a lot of texture and colour but then this fades out into pale colours and flat texture.

Refining Work

During this weeks Tutorial it was noticed that I had been experimenting with new ideas and had produced lots of images to work from, but as I had got a bit carried away with new ideas I needed to sit down and thoroughly look through what I have done and pick out what is working and what is not.

This I have done and have zoomed in on many pieces of work to see areas that can be achieved in knit. The imagine below I feel will look good in knit capturing the linear marks  with stripe/ ripple so subtle texture, then moving into more textures like hook up and different tensions and thickness's of yarns.

Close up of painting

Looking through my sketchbooks I saw some samples that I had created over the summer, were I had layered lots of fabrics for texture, this I feel was working well and could link this to my drawings as they hold a lot of textures, this I could even achieve by adding plastics onto my samples after, or adding other materials into the knit. 

Summer Sample