The group liked my abstract style of drawing because of it's loose qualities in the drawings. They found the marks that I created in a range of media. The scale of my work is large and dominant, which the group felt complements my layered compositions.

Because my work varied in style and subject, the group felt that I could narrow my subjects down. For weave my work might benefit if I did more painting observations of texture and colour. Also I could photocopy and blow up areas or my current drawings that could be collaged and manipulated

Georgia Fisher

Georgia uses her  paintings and collages to base her luxury weave samples on. I feel interested by her work because of the way that she has captured moments of charcoal alike marks in yarn textures. I think that her working method is similar to my way of practise, because I like to base my woven work on the colours and mark qualities that are in my paintings.

Henry Moore

On a visit to Thailand,  I collected coral that washed up on the beach. I concentrated on the ghost outline shape of coral so I drew the negative space around leaving the blank shape of the coral. Henry Moore's sculptures and drawings have very organic shapes that arc smoothly and allow the tone of shadows to add more extravagance to the shapes. 

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid is a  

Rob Sawer

Rob Sawer builds up a surface to bed his abstract landscape paintings over. His landscapes are painted as though they are viewed from a satellite and focus on the light and sky, earth and ground but also time and memory. Earth is shaped by the weather but also the foot steps. I often find interest in the natural staircases in the land that have been created by cattle. I find natural things to be the sauce of patterns and texture and see the things as ever changing pieces of art because ineveitably these things will not stay the same forever. It would be interesting to Create a piece of cloth that I could constantly evolve over time. 

I think that in many ways something I could weave could evolve in its intentions of use, which is another way of evalution. Rob Sawer has inspired me to work directly with texture and  to process paintings/collages that usually I would leave alone. 

Aline Nakagawa de Oliveira

Aline Nakagawa's work is based on DNA however I have a select interest based on the way she captures a pattern but It doesn't flow her patterns in a repetive way. Her yarn choices have a reflective glair from the depth of shadows of the darker toned yarns. I think that Aline Nakagawa's method could be a similar way of working to mine because I use the colour and tone changes in my paintings which I then relate to weave samples.

Material Mnemonics

Zana Ajvazi 

'Work inspired by research into material innovation, and the crossovers between textiles and other disciplines, including science and socio-economics; also the intricacy and interplay of different cultures, materials and traditional weaving techniques. - See more at: http://www.texprint.org.uk/index.php/designer/zana-ajvazi/#sthash.4AnoWYFZ.dpuf' 

Zana Ajvazi's work manipulates her woven textiles to experiment with new technology, however I am interesting in the  lack of certainty in the way the fabric will evolve after being processed. The steam beds could be an interesting way of creating a three dimensional form in the cloth in a way that connotes the change in process of weather and wear and tear. 

I visited the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. The textures within the exhibits were what caught my attention. I found that the changes of natural objects were particularly interesting because of the way they naturally decompose but the way they disfigure due to them being processed unnaturally. It made me consider the beauty and art that is created unintentionally and uncontrollably. As an example rusting metal, rotting wood even the wear on car tires. 

A cropped image of a charred wooden block. At the Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition.

David Nash is a sculptor who uses wood. His work inspires me because he uses raw edges in his work. To me this is a very honest way of working by allowing the medium you are using to be beautiful out right by it's self.Although wood as a medium for my Textiles based projects wouldn't be something I could use, many of it's qualities can be translated through yarn. Also the formation of the fabric could relate to this style of sculpture and could have three dimensional qualities.

On a quest to find inspiration within the small mundane things around where I live, the things that I usually over look, but from seeing the RCA Summer Exhibition I wanted to look at the things that are not in a state that generally would be considered 'perfect'. This tire has a formation that was intended for reasons beyond its appearance, there has been a lot of control in its design though as its been used the wear on the tire has happened through no design control. With that thought I want to consider pieces of art work I could create with a lot of design control then allow the piece to gain character through no control of my own. Possibly through weather or sanding it down.

my close up image of a car tire

ELLE Decoration is always a big source of inspiration as I am very interested in interior design, I would like my textiles career to link closely to interior, whether that be with fabric or more sculptural pieces like lighting. The August 14 edition caught my eye because of its uses of drift wood for furniture. I like the uses of natural materials and the colour schemes are neutral. The interior has been upcycled from 'dyed grain stacks' which has interesting textures in it.

Unit X Pinterest Board

http://gb.pinterest.com/zoeatkinson12/unit-x/

Unit X Conclusion

When I reviewed my embroidery samples, I realised that my colours appeared flat because they were pre dyed synthetic fabrics. In weave, I was keen to add even minimal shifts of shades to differentiate the way that the texture of the yarn affects the appearance of the colour throughout. I learnt that you do not need to change colours drastically to achieve depth within the sample and imagery.

Although I worked individually, it was very useful to have group critics on my work because it enabled me to look and explore various processes and takes on the same brief. I found my group tutorials had a big affect on the progress of my work. From my first tutorial I was advised to broaden my colour palette and to do a more extensive range of drawings for my visual research.

Some examples of my samples before I broadened my colour palette.

My contextual research was vital to my understanding of the uses of and variety in passimentrie. I looked across the art platforms to inform my visual research. Piet Mondrian's style of drawing the structure of trees informed my mark making, and transformed my drawings from being solid blocks of colour to now having contrasting marks and colours, which I found particularly useful for my woven passimentrie. My new visual research had movements of vivid colour being revealed from a darker shade. I found that darker yarns with small sections of vibrant ones lift the whole sample. I placed these vibrant colours in occasionally to prevent the pattern from looking to regimented, because my drawings are loose with sudden moments of colour.

Acrylic painted Sketch book page with a woven sample inspired by this page.

I experimented with dyes and colour transfer processes, which were not always successful due to the synthetic materials I had used in my samples on. The dye would lift from the synthetic ribbon but the threads stayed to the original colour. The threads dyed in the dye baths, however the ribbons colour didn't really take, the colours went moody. This did give some depth to my flatter samples, but was still disappointing, in reflection I should have used natural materials.

 This then affected my fabric choices to using mainly natural fabric like wool and linen in my embroidery samples so that I would have the option of reprocessing them if I wanted to.   I decided that my process of practice works more efficiently when I construct a pattern instead of embellishing readily patterned fabrics. It was easier to create embroidery samples after I had a body of weave pattern designs to influence my work. I chose chenille yarn to use in my weave because it empathised the linking structure of the pattern more prominently due to it being a thicker yarn. To relate my embroidery samples to my weave samples I enlarged key moments in the patterns formed in the weave, with flocked ribbon and mock suede because they resembled the chenille well. 

Woven samples. In the middle; chenille yarn with larger proportions. On the right; chenille yarn with ribbon weft.

 

Embroidery samples on linen, with flocked ribbon and cord. Inspired by my Woven samples.

During this project, I have learnt a new technique, which with additional time I would have chosen to develop. This was a combination of a weave and embroidery technique, where you create a warp that is bound together with a dissolvable fabric and stitch. With this process, I would have liked to make my own ribbon that I would have embroided down on to fabric with the 21 braiding foot. This could have given me more control over colour and would have been an interesting way to combine weaves into embroidery.

Overall, I am pleased with the progress of my work through Unit X. Generally, I have stuck to the concept of roller coaster structures and linking shapes. I have learnt that my embroidery approach is stronger when I construct new patterns on the fabric. I feel that my embroidery samples improved after I had woven my weave samples. I feel that it was because of the strong pattern of linking shapes in the double cloth warp structure. My weave samples provided me with compositional ideas and colours that I then reflected in my embroidery samples. 

I am pleased I progressed from my original colour pallet, because my newer varied colours allowed my compositions to have moments of contrasting colour to show that the pattern isn't too regimented. I feel that my colour palette has been the biggest challenge to overcome through unit X. In the beginning I trapped myself in a limited palette, which affected my visual research that was feeding my ideas for embroidery processing. I think that I managed to overcome this problem by introducing complementary and contrasting colours to the red hues.

The use of blue contrasts with my original palette of orange and red.

I am also aware that synthetic fabric will not dye very well so I decided to use natural linens and wool fabrics to allow me to experiment with dying and heat transfer processes. 

Unit X Development

During the project I was introduced to the princess-pleating machine; It is a machine that requires patience and more hands. Because of this, I got a team together to collaborate to create our own samples on the princess pleater, but using the same thread that we set up together. This was more time efficient because we quickly learnt which fabrics worked best in the pleater and the effects it created on different fabrics. This enabled us to create more advanced samples than what we would have achieved individually.
My personal discovery from this princess pleating process was that silk slub fabric creates a less regimented pleat that makes the fabric become springy when it's gently pressed with the steam iron. I then pulled the threads away. To improve this method on the silk further, I would repeat the process a few times to see a different quality in the fabric.

On the left: princess pleated sample before being dip dyed. The right is the dyed sample.

I find the 121 Cornelly machine is low maintenance to draw with. I enjoy using the steering handle allows you to create looping smooth imagery. This makes me regret choosing a such a structure orientated theme. However, I do like the prominent stitch that this machine creates. Online, I found 'Motif pillow' (http://www.motifpillow.com/) that has some structural and composition motifs and I think similar designs would translate well through use of the 121 Cornelly.

Blue and Gold collection on Motif pillow.

From looking at 'Motif Pillow', I decided to deconstruct a small section of one of my paintings into three parts. I then created a new narrow composition from the shapes and created a sample with ribbon using the Bernina and the braiding foot. When I jumped from section to section drawing the new structure of the drawing, I allowed to ribbon to be free and connected to give the sample a fluid 3D quality. This could be seen as a metaphoric link to the movement of the roller coaster. I think that the fluid lines of uncontrolled ribbon combined with the bound down ribbon gives a variety of tone in a mono colour of orange piece, through the way light reflects off of the different fabric qualities and surfaces.

Ribbon sample with the section of the painting that I deconstructed into three parts.

I block threaded my loom into a deflected double cloth warp after being inspired by some Margo Selby patterns from her ‘Contemporary Weaving Patterns’ book. The patterns I can make on this warp are limited, which has enabled me to focus on developing the patterns with different proportions to link them to my drawings. The patterns I have been using gives a linking affect which I feel I should built on the idea of structures being bound. I would like to translate the weave pattern into embroidery by using the cording foot. I have found that my embroidery samples are stronger when I construct a pattern onto them instead of embellishing an area.