Exploring Textiles

The aim of this exercise is to select and explore new and appropriate making and de-constructing techniques to translate lighter and more transparent qualities into my yarns.

The particular qualities I can observe in the watercolour stripe patterns are : translucence, blurring, tonal transitions, airiness.

Plastic bags stitched and snipped – don’t look very precious but the colours are good.

Organza is light and airy – I’m not sure that I like it at all. I like cutting with a soldering iron though as this gives a good fray proof edge that could be useful.

I have some amazing silk that deconstructs itself, fragile with washing and wear. The warp and weft pick up colours from my watercolour stripe patterns . Using my fingers and a needle I frayed and shaped the fabric. I like the way that once freed of the warp/weft grid the threads start to undulate, creating little windows. The frayed green edges visually bleed and blur like the watercolour paint.

I have a book called Contemporary Whitework by Tracy A Franklin & Nicola Jarvis, I can use it to explore other pulled thread techniques.

This thick yarn was bound with clear and green tape and then teased out to emulate the watercolour blur – it’s not very interesting so moving on swiftly…

Maybe this needs something added later??

This is a yarn I made at the beginning of the project by deconstructing a packaging binding tape, I really liked the airiness of the structure and want to develop it further.

I’ve made a tool to turn plastic bottles into string, I’m  gathering other people’s rubbish now to turn into something beautiful!

I experimented with knotting to make little string of sparkling diamonds, twisting the strand beyond the plastic limit, and using heat to help retain the twist. Finally for now I used  little bits from a fluorescent plastic straw that I found discarded in the park. I’m really pleased with this, it is translucent, has tonal transitions where the plastic is stretched and compressed, and an airiness from the structure.

 

 

I added the fluorescent straw to this yarn , replacing some of the tape and making a more interesting and physically stronger yarn

De-constructing and reconstructing nettles is my favourite  finding of this project. When fresh, the green is vivid but this dulls in a very short time so perhaps not the most successful for this exercise. I was proud of the way that I joined the shapes while constructing and there are many possibilities for taking this technique further. I have been looking at a book called ‘The Art Fabric:Mainstream’ by Constantine Larsen. A collection of structural textile arts from the 1970’s. I can see how  contemporary textiles has built on these early textile pioneers and I’m really excited about exploring 3D structural textiles soon.

This is a simple knotted plastic bottle strand, combined with knotted shredded parcel binding strip. The binding strip looks very organic and makes me wonder about combining natural and manufactured materials. Particularly plastics with nettle as both are considered fairly worthless. A used bottle is rubbish and nettle considered a weed, I would like to turn them into something profound.

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Re-interpret, re-invent. Yarn designs and simple textile constructions based on the colour studies of the Old Masters painting. the post is here

Whilst completing the former exercises I had an over whelming urge to mix colours using a drop spindle. While researching I came across the idea of art yarns and felt that this colour exercise was an ideal palate to experiment with.

 

If you look at the painting you will hopefully see how I have tried to replicate the order and proportion of colours as they appear from top to bottom.

I laid out the fibres in a mirror image, spun them onto a drop spindle then found the midway point and plyed them together. I’m really intrigued by the result, It was a very pleasing process.
Likewise yarn wraps seemed an obvious technique to explore, as they are ideal to mix colours. I wanted to see if I could create the two identities. The elegant figure at the easel and the more rugged mentor.

 

I then started to think about macramé so created some sample knots,

This sample uses more strings so I could try to incorporate colours from the image.

The diagonal string is called the carrier, in the neutral version I knotted the other strings around it as per macramé instructions. I dyed some strings to match the painting that combine the design and colour charge tears. I wanted the yellow and white  to respond to the silken wrap so I devised a way to use the carrier string as the knots. I like this.

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Demonstration of creativity – The criteria about Demonstration of creativity in the course notes  talk of  risk taking and developing a personal voice, creativity, invention  and experimentation.

I have no idea of my personal voice as yet, I am a small child overwhelmed in a pick and mix sweet shop, wanting to try everything and at risk of being overwhelmed in a huge sugar rush. I am however inquisitive and happy to experiment, not having any specialist skills I do not know what rules to break , so can happily furrow a path in any direction (I hope though, onwards and upwards!). For example – learning to spin, what a joy! I have no need at this point to create evenly spun, yarns and I am sure I would horrify some spinners with my results, however my gnarled, uneven results are perfect for the yarns I have developed.

I think that I am starting to show experimentation and creativity, I’m sure that I am covering some old ground, I would like to spend more time investigating artists work , although I am currently not finding time to do this, I know that an important part of the course and my creative develpoment , although I do regularly flick through books and websites I must find time to investigate the work of others properly, in more detail and more importantly record my findings and how they can inform my work.

This section of ATV excites me, I’m really enjoying working in a more 3D manner and I hope that my playfulness with fibres and structures is showing through. During project one I have worked in many ways some simple ,some refined. In part two I will continue to be fed by a natural progression. I think that although I have not found my voice ,I am developing the confidence to stray from the course-note path now and then, to investigate responses to the brief that feel relevant and appropriate to me at this time. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve exhausted any possibilities with my approach so far, I have deliberately not started to present my work until the yarn investigations are complete – though some ideas are brewing…

 

I found this task really difficult as my neutral textile is knitted wool and translating yarn as yarns is difficult to get my head around..

I tried finger knitting with  knitted scrim – a sort of macro/micro idea, I was amused by using  a knitted fabric to represent a strand of wool, the idea has something interesting about it. It didn’t excite me massively though. 

Knotting sisal and jute was about looking at a fibre under a microscope… hmmm

Placed next to my original study I’m very unsure about hitting consideration of colour or proportion of colour without a bit of extra explanation about where this madness came from.

The unravelled sock kept its kinked structure and was fun to work with, this exercise is feeling very forced though.

Thinking of words used to describe wool; wiry, steely, copper tones etc made me think about including some metal into my yarns. I came across some metal swarf so I dipped a string in PVA glue and coated it in the swarf – this made a brilliantly dangerous yarn – like an angry sheep! it is surprisingly sharp to touch and sticks to everything like cleevers, I thought that it would have a steely glint but the glue made it look quite dull. To make it safer i dragged across merino tops of colours i observed in the original study, they have attached like snags of wool on brambles and I was pleased.

I really wanted a steely glint so I spun some yarn and during the plying stage introduced some spirals of swarf.

These final two sample yarns a much more successful than the earlier ones, exaggerating what I could see in my colour study , using creative words and thinking about how to stretch myself  gave me  more to engage my creative mind with. It really does feel time to move on though.

 

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4.2 Experimental yarns and concepts based on the colour chips from printed fabric exercise.

Such a surprise to find so many of my stashed yarns complement this fabric so well. Though to be surprised is surprising given that I am partial to a palette of greens and blue..

This yarn picks up the dark and bright greens , the addition of olive really mutes the joy of the palette, similar but on its best behaviour, the crinkled effect does remind me of the shapes of the flowers.

The Noro yarn incorporates the colours in chunks.

This recycled sari silk has colours that match almost perfectly , they are mixed more thoroughly than the Noro wool.

Using a strip of the sample fabric and plying it with a black thread seemed like a place to start. Exact colours, pleasingly spaced, even rhythm like the fabric pattern . Not particularly revolutionary though!  So not an exciting yarn but a possible useful solution for future applications, definitely usable.

Using the hemp strings, I used the stronger structure to emulate the petal shapes. The blue thread alternated with mauve, was used as a wrap to represent the dots in the flower centres, I pulled them tighter than the other strings to relieve the tension in the other colours , this allowed them to form wavy shapes that emulate the printed pattern quite successfully.

Taking this idea further I ripped the edge of a wired organza ribbon and combined it with telephone wire in green and blue.(this was rescued from the kerbside, some time ago from a BT engineer who was going to throw it away! Its moved house at least twice so I’m so glad to find a use for it!!)

The wire gives good form, softened by the frayed ripped edge of the ribbon, I like the different negative spaces, and the light and dark shadows that are cast.

I became very aware of the impact of shadows at the Traces of life exhibition in Dalarnas, Sweden. To me shadows allude to further layers of meaning, they invite further thought, elusive, ethereal, changing with time.

The coarseness or fineness of a surface are equally about a visual sense as a tactile one.

Deconstruction- Reconstruction –Checking through my handbook the concept of deconstruction -reconstruction leaped out at me. My desk is looking a bit messy now and I was wondering what to do with a frayed bit of the fabric. I had pulled off a few threads and admired how they held just a trace of printed colour. In terms of colour match they couldn’t be more perfect, but so fragile.

One of the yarns I found in my first investigation is very fluffy, with the fluff seemingly trapped in the ply of the yarn. I needed to try to reconstruct it using perfect colours.

It took some time to carefully  de-construct the fabric and separate the warp and weft. I liked the effect when there were only a few warp threads left holding the perfectly aligned weft.

By laying the warp threads, ensuring that they overlapped I used my spindle to make a single ply of printed strands. I added some more twist to some cotton pearle and then played them together adding a tiny bit of weft every couple of twists. I’m frankly delighted with the result!

Thinking back to the sari silk yarns I wanted to produce a more thorough mix of colours so I used a Japanese technique, using a selection of wool yarns.

I came across a Japanese technique called Kumihimo at school recently, and immediately saw the value for mixing colours together, rather like  a tweed fabric, but much more even than tweed yarn. A slow meditative process, I experimented a little along the length by playing with tension- trying to capture the rhythm  of the printed pattern . I’m really quite fascinated with this playing with form and structure and will revisit at some point.

The rhythm is like a story or piece of music, changing in tempo and  form , the green ripples a different emotion to the black. I’m really quite fascinated by this.

Thinking about the lines on the fabric that define the edges of the flowers I stitched a zig zag across a green ribbon and gathered it up. It really does emulate the idea of the flowers but I really do not like it, it is too frilly and i think that the ribbon edge is just too shiny.

In the course notes it mentions making links with materials used in children’s toys. My brain processed this firstly as cut out paper dolls – I had some paper in similar colours to my fabric. I had recently been looking at the work of Tord Boontje and decided to try a garland of paper flowers.

My first attempt was very solid, the second has a more pleasing drape and creates a lovely 3D shape.

I used a section as a pattern and recreated it in rip stop nylon, bright, bold and a lovely filter of light. If I was to pursue this at some point I could laser cut the fabric and make hundreds of them. They look lovely hanging in the window.

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