Part 4 - Experimenting with structures Exercise 4

This exercise was to make a grid of any size.  After working with the flimsy lavender stalks for the last exercise I decided go with more rigid and used wooden kebab sticks.  I still found it very fiddly to tie the sticks together and eventually used craft wire.  I used silk tops, wire, paper, raffia, knitting wool of various thicknesses and torn fabric to weave areas of the grid.  I like two areas of weaving the first is the middle section that is turquoise and green is knitting wool and has been tightly woven.  I like the solid look also it looks neat but has some texture because the wool was one that had thick nubs in parts.  The second area I like is bottom left of the grid where I used wire, silk tops and torn fabrics.  I like it because of the colours and it is a much freer bit than the first area I like giving a nice contrast.  I like the piece overall because of the colours I have but as a whole piece I think it is too messy.  Again I was not sure whether this was what I was supposed to do but went with my instincts and feel pleased about that. 

• Did you enjoy inventing constructed surfaces?  Were you surprised at the results?  Can you see a connection between your choice of materials and types of structures you made - regular, irregular, small or large scale?  Which samples worked best - and why?

I enjoyed making constructed surfaces particularly the hand-twisted ropes and braids.  I feel that I have experimented more with this exercise.  I found the results interesting when I used extremes of materials such as a thick knitting yarn with wider torn strips of fabric.  I like this because they turned out larger and you could see the structure very well.  The machined cords worked very well especially the machining of old tights.  I like the way these cords can be manipulated and sewn into quite a robust structure like the small bowl I made. 

At first I did not enjoy the grid making exercises as much as the braid making because I found them quite fiddly and I was really unsure as to whether I was doing the correct thing.  Once I began to play around with the materials I liked the thought processing.  When tying the structures and it wasn't working I enjoyed trying to come up with other ideas on how to get around this.  I enjoyed exercise 4 more than the previous one and perhaps this was because having gone through the previous exercise and its difficulties I was more able to find solutions.  

I think the grid in exercise 4 worked better than the triangular structures in exercise 3.  I chose to flimsy a material to outline the shape of the triangle.  The grid worked better because the structure was more solid and I chose more varied materials which I think give more of an interest to the piece.  I also think the colour scheme is more attractive.  Though I do wish now that I had dyed the kebab sticks.

• How accurate were you in matching all the colours in your postcard:

with paints?
with yarns/other material?

I was pleased with the matching of the colours in paint from my choice of postcard.  I used designer gouache and find these really good for mixing to the colour I need.

I was also pleased with the yarn wrappings I did from the postcard and magazine cutting.  I feel both were successful but I like the way I interpreted the texture of the water in the magazine picture.  I think looking back at the pieces I could have used some other materials such as torn strips of fabric.  

Part 4 - Experimenting with structures Exercise 3

In my garden I have a large lavender plant.  Each year I cut down the lavender and dry it.  I decided to use the stalks that were left when the lavender seeds had been stripped from them for this exercise.

I decided to make a triangular shape for the frame I was to make.  The first one I tied the stalks together with thread and wound knitting wools around the shape in a random way.  The second piece had the stalks tied together with knitting wool and I would chenille thread around the three edges of the triangle.  Various threads including knitting ribbon, textured knitting wool, raffia and threaded seed beeds were wound across the triangle and then an area was woven with textured knitting thread. 

I wasn't and still am not sure whether I was doing this exercise in the right way.  I wasn't sure how the examples should basically look but then thought perhaps that is the object of the exercise just to use my own imagination and initiative to make a small structure.  In hindsight I would not have used the lavender sticks as they were very flimsy and kept splitting and breaking.  I persevered because I like the delicacy and shape of the stalks.  They are not round but have four flat edges so are cuboid in shape.  I also like the colour which is grey with a greenish tinge.  I think I limited my choice of yarns too much and could have been a bit more experimental with my choice.  However, I did enjoy constructing the shapes because I had to keep rethinking how I handled them, tied them together and got them to remain rigid enough to work with.

Part 4 - Stage 2 Experimenting with structures Exercise 2

I enjoyed this exercise very much and got quite carried away making hand twisted ropes and braids.  I feel that I have experimented more with this exercise and raided my collection for as many different materials as I could find.  These included wires, torn fabric, knitting yarns and threads.

In the past I have done some lace making and used the lace making cushion to make some of the braids as it was a comfortable height to work at and I was able to stabilise the threads with pins making it easier to work the braids. 

Below are hand twisted ropes using knitting wool, knitting ribbon that has been threaded with wool and torn fabric with metal rings at intervals.  The plaits are made from torn sari fabric. Silk tops have been machined into a braid with strips of fabric attached at interval.  The braid on the far right is old tights twisted and machined with cotton machine embroidery thread.  This makes a nice substantial braid that twists and can be manipulated easily.  I like this braid and made some more which I then machined together in a round using variegated machine embroidery thread and made a small bowl to which I added beads around the edge.  The bowl is tiny 8cms across and 3cms deep but it is I think a successful way of using the machined braid and is big enough to hold small beads.  I like this because it is a finished item made out of a sample braid.

Below are I think my most successful attempts at making braids, plaits and cords.  I used a variety of materials including wire, knitting wool and torn fabric.  I crocheted lengths of knitting wool and used a half hitch knot to cover the wool using gimp.  I did a half hitch knot in gimp over a covered wire core.  Fabric strips were plaited with knitting wool.  Knitting wool was used as a core for a fabric with a half hitch knot worked over it very loosely.  This is one of my favourites and can be seen in the middle of the photograph below (the fabric is pink and yellow with copper coloured knitting wool.  I like it because I was beginning to feel was working more experimetally and freely as I did this piece.  I also like the hand twisted rope third from left which is made using knitting wool and a fancy knitting wool.  The fancy knitting wool has threads stricking out from it and makes this braid very textured and tactile.  This is why I like it.  I also like the bright colours of the red and mustard with the pieces of coloured fabric sticking out at intervals.  This is a change for me to use brighter colours as I tend to use more muted ones and I feel is a step forward for me.  I attribute this to doing the colour analysis exercises and I am now looking at colour schemes that I can put together from source material to make my sample pieces.  Again a step forward I think.  

I also made a machined braid by machining knitting wool with a cotton machine embroidery thread using a zig zag stitch.  I then plaited this.  It is fifth from the left in the photograph.  Again this was a different use of colour for me and I like it.  I like the strong rust machine thread against the mustard and pale turquoise knitting yarn.  A combination I would not have thought of before.

I really enjoyed this exercise and felt this was because I could just let my imagination go with regard to materials and types of braids I made.  

I saw on a blog how to use up left over fabric strips and make fabric hand twisted ropes  with them.  I had some fabric strips left over from making quilts.  I hand twisted them into fabric ropes.  This was actually quite addictive and I could have gone further and started to cut up yards of  new fabric just to make the cords. I thought this was a bit much and stopped when I had used a good batch of my leftover pieces.  I like the torn edges on the twists and the way the colours appeared as the pieces of fabric were picked up at random.  I am beginning to realise that I like texture and it is starting to feature more in my work. 

J Carey (2012) 200 Braids to Loop, Knot, Weave & Twist Search Press
R Lee (2010) three-dimensional textiles with coils, loops knots and nets Batsford

Part 4 - Stage 2 Experimenting with structures Exercise 1

The first piece has a warp that is paper I have placed under work when I have been painting and the weft is strips cut from a magazine page.  I think the contrast works very well.  I like the monochrome against the coloured warp.

This next piece again has strips from a magazine page and painted paper.  The painted paper weft has thinner strips than the warp and I like this effect because the colour is almost a hint and is not dominating the piece.  I like the warp strips being larger because the image on them is very textured looking and I think is a nice contrast to the painted strips.

The sample below is painted paper strips woven into hessian.  I pulled out some of the threads in the hessian so that the weave was more open.  I like this piece because there is a good contrast of size of the warp and weft and the hessian adds texture.  Looking at it now I think I could perhaps have tried to add some other papers which would have given even more texture.  It has more of a textured look than is shown in the photograph below where it looks a little 'flat'.

Below are two samples of paper as a warp with chenille thread and dyed scrim and knitting wool as a weft.  The third piece on the righthand side is dishcloth fabric as a warp with painted paper strips as a weft. I like the these pieces as they are more textural.  The piece in the middle with the knitting wool was more fragile to deal with even more so than the dishcloth piece but I think it has a nice raised effect.  I cannot wait to get to the weaving exercises in the course now that I have had a taster of playing with warps and wefts.

Part 4 - Project 8 Yarns Stage 1 Exploring the qualities of yarn

As I have enjoyed many crafts over the years I have collected a variety of yarns and threads.  This was more so during the time I completed a City and Guilds Embroidery course.  During this course my eyes were opened to the many many yarns and threads available and I store my collection in boxes by colour. They include different knitting yarns, embroidery threads (silk, cotton, linen), gimp, laces, fine threads and thick ones.  I have added to these things coloured wires and raffia and anything that can be substituted for threads. 

I get great pleasure from collecting yarns, threads and fabrics and take every opportunity to gather more to add to my collection when I am out and about.  I attend as many textile shows such as the Knitting and Stitching show as I can where there are many varieties of yarns and threads available.

Part 4 - Analysing colour, texture and proportion

For this exercise I chose to use a postcard and an image cut from a magazine from my collection of images.  The postcard is of the side of a boat on a beach with the sea and sky in the background.  This image lent itself really well to analysing the colours in it as they were clearly defined n stripes.  This was one of the reasons I chose this image so that I could easily pick out the colours to paint and then to wrap the threads.  As I began to look closely at the postcard I began to see more subtle colours such as there is a light grey in the cream paint on the boat which at first glance is not noticed.  I think this worked really well especially the thread wrapping.  The thread wrapping made me see colour combinations that I would not normally have liked or used.  If I had been asked to do a piece of work in the colours on the postcard I would not have liked to have used them but see the threads together has made me look at it differently so that when looking for inspiration I should not discard an image straight away.  

The second image I used was a cutting from a magazine of a picture of the sea.  I chose this as it was so different from the postcard in that the colours in the image are not as clear cut to look at and there is much more texture.  I enjoyed analysing this image.  There are so many different hues and shades of each colour.  As the picture shows different textures I think I have shown this in the yarn wrapping.

I enjoyed doing this and shall take this into my sketchbook work. 

Visit to Ruthin Art Centre

As a birthday treat my husband took me to visit Ruthin Craft Centre. The Centre is in Ruthin Denbighshire.  It has three galleries where contemporary applied art exhibitions are regularly held and on site makers studios.  The gallery building is very light, airy and welcoming.  

The three exhibitions that I saw were by Simon Carroll who is an expressionist Potter,southern lines and northern lights which was work by a selection of designers and Pamela Rawnsley who did silversmithing and jewellery.

When I first walked into the gallery that was housing the Simon Carroll pottery exhibition and saw his work I thought I did not like it.  However, as I looked closely at his pieces I could see pattern in it and that the colours blended into one another making lovely textured surfaces.  I think I didn't like this work at first because it seemed very big and clumsy but I did like the texture, colours and pattern.  It was sad to read that Simon Carroll had died at an early age.  

Pamela Rawnsley was a silversmith and jeweller.  She lived in Wales and most of her work was inspired by landscape.  I liked this exhibition very much.  The pieces were displayed in a lovely natural light filled gallery.  Pieces were in glass cabinets,some free standing and there were some framed pieces.  It was very interesting to see some of her sketchbook pages which had been framed and collograph print.  I was able to get closely up to these and they interestingly they were quick drawings of marks.  They reminded me of some of the first mark making exercises on this course.  I think there was obviously a lot of thought and work that went into Pamela Rawnsley's work and the simplistic look is very attractive but deceiving as to what went into it.  My favourite pieces were some of the jewellery she had made.  Particularly the brooches.  Again they were of a simple design and were beautifully made. The bowls and vases were very interesting shapes and I particularly liked the small bowls that had patterns on them as if they had been drawn on afterwards. I liked this set of work as it was modern and I could see where the inspiration for the work had come from.  I could also see it standing the test of time.  When I read up about Pamela Rawnsley I was very sad to read that she had died last year.  Her husband is keeping her website up to record and celebrate Pamela's work.

The third gallery housed an exhibition southern lines and northern lights which is a view of design practices in Wales. It explores the ideas and understanding of materials needed to illuminate them.  It looks at design in production and reproducing by hand.  There are pieces exhibited by seven artists. Next to each piece was a clear explanation and the inspiration for it.  There was also a separate leaflet for each artist containing a short explanation of their background and inspiration together with photographs of some of their work in the exhibition. There were two artists work that I was immediately attracted to.  The first, my favourite, was Sian O'Doherty.  Her current collection is Print, Stitch, Cut, Sew.  The pieces on view  were framed.  They attracted me because they looked very tactile and neat.They were not very colourful but she had used black, white, greys with flashes of red.  Not a bright red.  The red was in the same hue as the greys so stood out but at the same time merged in with the rest of the work.  The pieces appeared to be layered printed fabrics machined in rows at intervals then cut and hand stitched in rows s that the fabric was lifted and gave a glimpse of the fabric underneath.  I really liked the overall effect.  I wish I had seen this exhibition before completing Part 3 of my course.  I found Sian's pieces very inspiring.

Another artist exhibiting whose work I liked was Sian Elin.  There were printed fabrics hung next to lampshades made from printed fabric.  The patterns were quite geometric and the colours ranged from teal and grey to peach and orange.  There were a couple of black and white patterned lampshades that were very striking because of the shapes used and the negative areas that brought up different patterns on them.  Rolls of the patterned fabric were also displayed.  What attracted me about Sian's work was the colour.  I have realised that this is what attracts me to pieces first and then the texture.  

The on site makers' studios are very accessible and the makers can be seen working.  There are many events and workshops held at the Centre and I shall certainly be keeping my eye open for possible workshops.

I thoroughly enjoyed my birthday treat visit to the Centre. Most of all I found the exhibitions interesting and inspiring and was introduced to artists I had not previously heard of but also because I had a lovely lunch in the Centre's very nice cafe!