designboard done

I got my designboard together and emailed it to Linda. I scanned in the cuttings, sketches and paintings and added some text, so the board as a whole only exists digitally. I’m putting all the bits and pieces in a sketchbook so I can refer to them easily.

design board

the inspirational images are cuttings from Country Living

The hanging’s going to be in three sections. I’m thinking of the bottom layer in lightweight felt, maybe merino with some silk fibres for lustre, with two dyed sheer silk layers laid over it, so that I can cut back through one and both layers of silk and/or trap some shapes between the silk layers. Appliquéd ‘flowers’ on the surface could be silk organza/machine stitched slips/silk paper shapes. I want to keep everything quite light. Time to experiment and sample and see how it might work.

design in context

beginnings…

I guess beginning a blog is something like the first mark on the blank paper, such a small thing but the rest will flow from it. I want to write about the textile courses I’m taking and any other bits of art related stuff that seem important to me. A lot of my life is spent supporting other people’s art through the web, so this is a bit of pure indulgence for me. I also want to tie my work to some external accountability – even if no one reads this, putting it out here regularly seems like a good commitment that will hold me to actually getting into the work regularly too.

In the next few months I am finishing one course and starting another. I’m on the 8th module of Linda Kemshall’s online patchwork and quilting City and Guilds course – it’s supposed to be a short course (one year) but it’s taken me several years to get this far already. I just sent off my initial ideas for the first of two final assessment pieces – a wall quilt. I plan to finish this in the next month and the next one the month after.

At the same time, I’ve enrolled for the OCA Textiles 1 course. It’s a more general course that looks at fabric construction techniques as well as surface design and stitch – the materials haven’t arrived yet but I’m really looking forward to it. The OCA course is time limited – two years maximum – I think that may help to keep me focused.