Direct Dye and Discharge

now that I have done another repeated pattern print I am focusing on my main project. I have dyed 4 pieces of cotton in colours taken from a bird which I have drawn from. I have then printed some of the poem text onto the fabric in discharge dye. Which takes the colour away when heated. Instead of putting the whole fabric in the steamer and it taking all the colour out (where printed), I ironed the fabric and had more control over it.
I absolutely love how they have worked out, but now I am going to cut them into strips for my weft.

Today I did another print of my repeated pattern, but this time I had another screen which blocked out sections. I did this sample with pink and blue dye.

I am really enjoying printing and am bringing it into my main project, by printing onto my warp yarns and onto material which I will then cut and spin into yarn for my weft.

Repeated Pattern, Repeated Pattern, Repeated Pattern, Two.

Yay, I have printed my two and a half metres of fabric, and I am so happy with it! As the screens were crazy big we worked in pairs to produce our prints, and as I said I am very pleased with how mine turned out. I have enjoyed the whole process from drawing the design, to putting the design onto my koda trace, to setting up the print table and actually printing. In fact I have enjoyed it so much I have asked Neil – our lovely print technician –if I can keep my screen for a little longer to produce at least another sample. I also hope to incorporate print into my project somehow – maybe printing text on to yarn? We shall see how that goes!? But for now here are some pictures of my Repeated Pattern Print sample.

Top Drawer 16.1.11

On Sunday my friend Jack and I went to the Top Drawer exhibition in Earls Court. It was fantastic! There was inspiration left right and centre! The place was filled with ideas and excitement, and was definitely worth waking up for at 5am! When we arrived we received our badges and began to wonder around all the fabulous stalls. There was everything from cards and textiles to trinkets and toys.
Before the show, I had begun to look into Autumn/Winter 11/12 for inspiration of shapes and colours, and having been to the show I am definitely going to continue with this research. This is not only for the reason that the colours and shapes work nicely with my project, but also because there is a ‘theme’ / ‘design icon’ of birds – which obviously works perfectly with my project.
Looking around the show I not only took design inspiration but also took away some ideas for drawing techniques. For example – doing black and white drawings with some block colour; using as little lines as possible but still showing as much detail as possible too; and using paint in an expressive and abstract way.
Seeing everything in the show and getting to talk to some of the designers was so inspiring and has got me even more excited for this project. One of these designers was Taisir Gibreel, who graduated last year and has already exhibited at rather a few well known shows. She was absolutely lovely and happy to talk to us, telling (and showing) us how hard work can really pay off. This was so inspirational as this could be us after we graduate next year – a very scary (but exciting) thought!

11/1/11 - birds, J Eastwood and P Clark

Today I have made a proper start to focus 2 of this project.
The project is still (loosely) based on T.S Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland’ but I am focusing on the bird imagery and making this my base for visual research. However I am still combining my drawings with text, making text drawings, and hopefully putting text into my weaving.
I began the day by going to the Castle Museum where they have a brilliant bird room. There is every bird you can think of from crows and magpies to pelicans and eagles. I did a few sketches of crows and gulls when I was there but will be going back a lot more over the coming days and weeks.
In the afternoon I had a tutorial with Jane Eastwood (http://janeeastwooddesign.com/index.htm, a textiles designer and weaver). This tutorial really helped me and got me even more excited for this project. She understood where I was coming from when I said I wanted to use words and use them in a more unconventional way, and has given me lots to think about. Jane also gave me the name of artist Paul Clark who makes collages from found papers – maps, tickets, stamps etc. I love his work and the idea of old paper/ text is really exciting. The way he has folded and chosen which papers/colours/textures to use is very inspiring and has got me thinking about my text and where I can source it from.

Repeated Pattern, Repeated Pattern, Repeated Pattern

So as I mentioned the first part of this project is repeated pattern and over the past 2 days we have been drawing our designs in some drawing workshops. The ‘images’ which we are producing have been from random objects which we all had to bring in. My object(s) were a knife and fork, however in the workshop we drew an object then passed it along, producing a ‘montage’ type piece. Each drawing was only for 2-4 minutes (varying time depending on how generous our tutor was feeling!) We then worked into our drawings filling the gaps with pattern. I am really enjoying the drawing process of this project as it is more expressive and it doesn’t have to be perfect. I am also enjoying filling the ‘negative spaces’ with pattern. Here are some images of my drawing so far, and the next step on the agenda is to draw it out onto a Koda Trace , so it can be put onto a screen for printing.

Following on, or starting a fresh?

Last project I was looking at T.S Elliots poem ‘The Wasteland’. I really enjoy turning words into images and find this poem so fascinating. Here are some images from my presentation we had to give; I may try to put up a few more images of the project when I get it back from uni! But for now my mind is sifting through all the ideas in my head for this next project. I am thinking I may stick to a poem and see what I can extract from the words – drawing from the words and also drawing with the words, just like Darren Cabon (image of the man in words, second image from the top), which I began to look into in my last project.

Part of this project is to enter 2 competitions, the first being the Bradford Textiles competition. I am hoping to do weaving for this and am going to think about the context to inform my drawings – something I have not done before, as I often think of context nearer the end. However, this competition requires me to start thinking of a context before, which I am looking forward to! ...I am going to have to really get my thinking cap on as I’m not sure how I can turn words into weaving quite yet, but as I’ve said this is just an idea; and the way my minds works this idea may evolve into many different things before I settle on one that I like and that is possible!

2011 - a New Year, a New Start.

We have just started back up at uni and boy are we hitting the ground running – hard! This next project has 2 focuses. The first is to produce a 2.5m printed fabric sample with a repeat pattern which we will draw in the workshop this Thursday; and the second focus is based on our own choice of theme and will be entered into 2 competitions. We also have to write a 2,500 word report.

Over the holidays, for Christmas presents and others, my lovely parents bought me some brilliant art books. One of which is ‘Masters of Fashion Illustration’ by David Downton. I have always been interested in fashion illustrations and always wished I could draw like them. This book is so full of interesting and exciting images and I hope to be able to take inspiration and tips from the artists within this book. There are many different qualities of line in the images and I am going to apply these to my drawings on Thursday, and throughout this project.