North Somerset Arts Week

Well, the course may be finished but there is still plenty to do.  Next week I am at North Somerset Arts Week with Gordano Textile Artists so I have been enjoying myself making some things to sell. 

These pendants combine acrylic with weaving and bonded fibres – I drew the shapes I wanted for the acrylic and had them laser cut by RazorLAB.

And some cards using my machine embroidery designs.  The dragonfly is on bonded threads and the heart is tiny strips of fabric with butterflies.

We are showing at Purbeck Lodge, Lake Road, Portishead BS20 7JA from 9-12th May, open 11-4.  It is easy to find as it is opposite the cafe and car park, and if the weather is kind we will be serving tea and cake in the garden.  Pop in if you are in the area, there is sure to be lots to see.  I am stewarding on Thursday and Friday if you want to say hello

Module 3 Chapter 12 and Tidying Chapters 7 and 8

Photos 1,2 and 3 Sheets of collected images of artists who use construction (I did these some time ago but I don't think I documented them) for chapter 12.




Photos 5,6,7,8,9 Sketchbook pages to show the short artist study on Laura Thomas.






Photos 10, 11 Going back to chapter 7, to show samples mounted. On the sheet in photo 10, the sample on the top right has been changed since it was last photographed.

Photo 11, below, shows the tiny piece of wire weaving combined with another sample. This could be the resolved sample as both pieces were based on ideas from the research project.


Photos 12,13,14 I have sewn the edge samples from chapter 8 into a cotton cover to make a sample book for future reference. Photo 12 shows the outside with some words stitched on to describe the contents.


Photo 13, folded over to show the pleated spine. The samples are grouped and stitched into the pleats. To decorate it, I repeated the beaded edge idea.

Photo 14 shows the pages inside.

Module 3 Chapter 7 - Weave

For this chapter, I am exploring the contruction of weave through using paper straws and small samples in fabric, thread and anything else that fits my theme. I am continuing to use the same colour scheme and some of the braids from chapter 5. (In case you are wondering what happened to chapter 6, it is a choice between using knit or weave). I had done some of this work during module 1 before the course was rewritten, but never finished it, so I have been adding to it this week. First, here are the paper experiments I had already done.

From Gallimaufry

From Gallimaufry

Two old samples, one in strips of fabrics and the second trying water soluble paper on metal strips and wire. I need to have another go with the paper as this is not very good.

Next is a larger sample which incorporates some of the braids from chapter 5 with coloured and textured metal and strips of fabric and yarn in the colour scheme from the research work in module 1. Most of these are ones I dyed as part of that module. I have tried to reflect the machinery/industrial landscape theme by weaving in triangular sections that relate to the work on pylons and by including metal.

My next sample (to the left of the picture) used wire for the warp as I wanted to fold it in the same way that I folded paper for the pylon designs shown on this project page. By coincidence, the speaker at our Embroiderers' Guild meeting last week was a weaver called Laura Thomas who has (amongst other wonderful things) made some pieces using very fine wire and silk, which she has then folded and pleated. This inspired me to have another go using a much finer wire and yarns and weaving it tightly. This gave me much cleaner, sharper folds but as it is time-consuming, the sample is tiny - about 2 inches square after folding and I could only fold it side-to-side (the paper is A4 sheets pleated in several directions).

Finally, I tried a bit of circular weaving by warping around all four sides of a square frame, a technique featured in Workshop on the Web some time ago, to make a cog-like shape.