January 2008 - loveFibre :: colour to touch

TIF Challenge January 4 – finished

Thank you for your comments, it wasn’t quite clear to me where it was going or what choices I should make, and I was a bit surprised by the direction things took today. I decided to use plastic netting (from a veggie bag) over the weaving in the end and this was what it looked like after that was stitched down. The weft is a Colinette Giotto yarn.

When I took it off the loom it looked like a big flower.

I began twisting the pairs of warps to secure the weaving and as I twisted them the circle formed itself into a shallow bowl shape – that wasn’t what I was expecting at all. I haven’t tried the circular weaving before so it was a case of fools rushing in… There was no way it was going to lie flat so I decided to let it take the lead and become a kind of vessel! Here I’ve started to twist coloured hemp yarn with the wire strands. (The crochet hooks are to wind the ‘tendrils’ round.)

Once all the strands were twisted I began to wind the tendrils.

This is it finished, from the top and from the side, it’s about 14cm across.

I learned a lot about the materials from doing this challenge, and about the value of sampling and experimenting. I really enjoyed the process, and the challenge of thinking visually about a concept.

There are lots of blog links to other people participating in this challenge here and here, plus the Flickr photo pool, and the Take it Further Challenge blog. There is an amazing range of work, I’ve been fascinated throughout January to see ideas and interpretations unfold in so many different ways. I wonder what February will bring?

TIF Challenge January 3

I spent some time this weekend sampling and exploring my ideas – I was planning to stop with the visual journal and not make a textile piece but one is emerging anyway. Here I’ve tried out some ways of representing the darkness. (The idea I’m starting from is admiration of people who’ve “confronted their particular darkness by allowing something bright and fierce and tender and courageous to grow in their lives”.)

I found that hemp yarn, though difficult to knit with, leaves behind lovely curls and tendrils when you unravel the knitting.

I decided to weave a base fabric of colour and brightness, and I think I’ll use an overlay of painted scrim or plastic netting for the element of darkness. Painted with acrylic or ink it keeps a shape and can be shades of black and grey – I want it to net itself over the coloured fabric like some dark, strangling thing – it should have an ugliness yet the overall effect be one of beauty. I’d like to use the plastic netting because it has intrinsic destructive qualities in the environment, the way it literally overwhelms living creatures. But I think the scale of it is too big. I have smaller nets but they’re more stiff and difficult to distort and I want the darkness to gather in some parts and be stretched thin in others. I should play around with that a bit more, but time is short….

This is the beginnings of my fabric. The warp is wire, and I plan to use the ends to form tendrils of colour growing out from the centre, through the netted darkness, an affirmation.

art and recession

I’ve been thinking about the economic situation over the last few weeks, about how it might affect our business and other plans for the coming year, so I was very interested to read this analytical and practical post on marketing art in a recession, by Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark. Although I’m not selling my work at this point, most of our clients are artists or in art-related businesses so we’ll also be affected by shifts and effects in the art market.

TIF challenge January 2

I’ve got my first ideas down in my sketchbook.

One of the images that’s playing in my mind is tendrils, and serendipitously we were tidying up a mass of clematis this afternoon so I rescued some to draw later. The next step is to do some painting and drawing and think about what aspects to focus on and what textile techniques will lend themselves to expressing them. The only thing I’ve decided on so far is to knit something dark, maybe with wire, and see how introducing colour/light will transform it. I want to end up with a series of related samples in a visual journal format that is integrated and ‘designed’, at least more so than my usual messy random sketchbook work.

lost in the post

Update – They’ve found it!!!! My tutor got it back this morning and is going to send it again using guaranteed delivery. I’m laughing and crying all at the same time. Thanks so much for your kind thoughts.

Royal Mail have mislaid at least half a dozen things sent by us and to us over the past year – noticeably more than in previous years. The most recent and most distressing is my last OCA assignment (i.e. pretty well everything I did between July and November) – posted by my tutor on December 8th and there is so far no sign of it. I take a little hope from the fact that a cheque I sent to the B&B we stayed in on Islay last year was finally delivered at the beginning of December – just over 6 months after I put it in the post! But it’s only a little hope… most of the things that the Post Office lose seem to stay lost – they must have a huge black hole somewhere.

I’m so glad I’m blogging because otherwise I might not have any photos of the work at all, but from now on I’ll be photographing everything, and in more detail. I wish I had taken photos of more of the sketchbook pages too.

The thing that’s affecting me most right now is that throughout the course you’re asked to select from previous design work and develop it. Of course I still have the work from assignment 1, but now I also have this big gap in the process. I do feel demoralised by it (and I don’t yet know how it will impact on my final assessment) but I know all I can do is accept it and get on with the next part…

… which does sound exciting – fabric manipulation, beginning a theme book, and designing and making a small piece, which could be part of a garment or bag. You can do a wall hanging but they encourage you to do something three-dimensional and that’s what I want to do. I also need to decide on a subject for my theme book from the welter of possibilities tumbling about in my mind – elephants, islands, circles, cooking, knitting, skirts, hearts, words, worn, torn, edges, rifts… I’ll probably have to throw them all into a hat and pull one out at random…

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