Group Tutorials - 31st October

Group Tutorials - 31st October

The tutorials today gave me my first opportunity to take a peek at other people's work, based on the scarf project. One of the main things that stood out to me was everybody's use of photoshop, adapting images and creating digital patterns. Considering this is a digital project, it is something I definitely need to think about using. From digitally created Photoshop patterns, I aim to re-draw these by hand, adding personal elements as to make the repeats less rigid and digital, reflecting my way of working more.

Another thing I need to think about is the theme running through this project, NORWICH. Something which kept coming up time and time again was making sure that it is clear the Norwich is an evident theme in the project drawings, but also heading into the final scarf design. There must be clear and visible links which are obvious to those who are not following our work. This will be difficult to bring into my work as I am focusing on the details of decorative architecture of Norwich. Perhaps I can overcome this difficulty through use of colour scheme and by looking into decorative lettering, such as pub signs too. This would bring me back towards the theme of Norwich.

For this reason I think one of my main next steps is to create a mood board based on the colour schemes that I think reflect Norwich, and how they are used in fashion and textiles. I must continue with my drawings in order to keep coming up with new ideas and designs for my scarf project and I really need to start thinking about materials and digital techniques I want to be using in my final scarf design.

Lecture - Bonnie Kirkwood

Lecture - Bonnie Kirkwood 

INFORMATION FROM BONNIE KIRKWOOD WEBSITE.

Multi award winning, Royal Collage of Art MA graduate, Bonnie runs her own successful global bespoke woven textile design and fabric consultancy business.

Based in central London, at Cockpit Arts Studios, Bonnie works internationally for the highest contemporary interior design market. She has an extensive and varied experience in both the interior and fashion industry working with impressive names such as Designers Guild, Christian Lacroix and Paul Smith, and with individual established design studios and worldwide fabric mills, in the commercial and luxury high end markets.

Bonnie's personal bespoke woven textile design and consultancy service, encompass the design, development and production of woven fabric, for residential and commercial interior use, working with individual customers, private homeowners, and in collaboration with individual architects and their clients.

Illustrating inspirational vision, expertise, eye catching colour, exquisite intricate structures and superior quality, Bonnie's designs have gained worldwide acclaim by prestigious interior design showrooms, and her contemporary inspirational hand woven designs are brought by international companies, by the likes of CK Home, DKNY, Boden, Mark and Spencer, and Abercrombie and Fitch to name a few.

Bonnie Kirkwood is a designer focusing on weave structures. Based in London, Bonnie works with individual clients and as a consultant and trend forecaster to larger companies. With extensive technical and market knowledge, Bonnie Kirkwood is able to balance freelance work with design consultancy, for European and far eastern mills, creating and designing collections of furnishing and home fabrics.

As a freelance designer, Bonnie Kirkwood creates broad ranges of both hand and jacquard woven fabrics for high end fashion and interior design companies.

Digital Printing Workshop

Digital Printing Workshop

The digital printing workshop today was really interesting. Although the workshop was short and there was a lot to cover, the concept of digital printing is not to hard to understand. that it is like a normal printer except it prints onto fabric. I can see why digital printing is so popular, it is a process which I think would be interesting to work with, however I feel that I would have add another element to the digital printing instead of just a single print, such as machine stitching. this would add another element to the print and show more of a skill. 

Digital printing is like using a normal printer except it uses dye instead of ink. You still the need to do the steaming and washing process like hand/screen-printing.

A price guide is available on the intranet, payment made via vouchers (available from uni shop)

     Example prices... Cotton £25 per metre, silk £40 per metre.

Best day to hand in designs is Tuesday or Wednesday, and the process takes about 5 days to complete. This must be taken into consideration when thinking about printing digitally.

Ava -this is the program used when digital printing. Take design created on photoshop to Neil and the design will be transferred onto AVA ready for printing.

Scarves...

Dimensions - 150cm length by 60cm width.

Silk habiti £23

Silk twill £30

You can work back into the digital print after the process. It is important that digital printing is the first process onto the fabric though, to get the best results.

SUBLIMATION PRINTING

Another form of digital printing where, using and printer , a design is printed onto paper before being transferred onto fabric using thee heat press.

MAN MADE fabrics only!!

Sublimation printing can also be hand printed for creating printed textures etc. for this direct dyes are used .

For all sublimation prints, heat press for ---- 1min----.

Group Repeat Print - Playing with Dyes

Group Repeat Print - Playing with Dyes

Although we did not have a timetabled session today, our group met up to try to decide on the colours we wanted to use in our final repeat print ahead of our timetabled session for printing our length later in this week.
We all brought in a variety of images looking into our ideas for our colour scheme, previously explored, reds,blues and purples. From here we picked out the colours we like the most and began to mix up the dyes to try to create similar colours to test onto off cuts from our silk fabric.
Displayed below is a table which shows the colour we tested and the ratios we used to create different shades.

After mixing up all of these different dyes we used another piece of silk to try layering up the colours and shades to give us a picture of which three worked best together. 

we decided on....

Cherry Red 0.5g

a mixture of all of the 0.01g dye (top column) painted onto background

WE ALSO DECIDED THAT WE NEEDED A DARKER MORE CONTRASTING COLOUR. WE THOUGHT ABOUT NAVY, SOMETHING WE WILL EXPLORE FURTHER ON THE DAY OF OUR PRINT

Lecture Series

Lecture Series

Polly Binns

Polly Binns is a textile designer, specialising in embroidery, who is a member of England's prestigious 62 group.

She grew up in a house of artists with her father who created modernist design work and her mother a landscape painter.

When she began her art career, she started in clay, but soon found the process of weaving, in which she wanted to understand the essence of cloth. Within this work, she began to explore artist's canvas where she was influenced by minimalist artists. She folded, pleated, stitched the cloth to raise the surface.
                In the mid 90's Polly Binn’s explored grid geometry and paid close attention to her use of materials. Her work is about observation and memory.

Before Polly Binns does any work in her studio, she walks. She repeats the same walk each time, in the Blakeney Channel on the north Norfolk coast of England for inspiration. Walking immerses her in a direct experience. Mud, sand, water, bird marks, light are observed and felt with all her senses.

In 1998, she received a PhD from England's University of Teesside for her new body of work entitled Vision and Process.

CAD embroidery

CAD embroidery

The workshop today, based on CAD embroidery or digital embroidery, was really interesting and made me think about all the extra opportunities that are open to us this year.

The workshop was a little slow and it was more lecture like than us actually being active, but I found it interesting because it was something that we hadn't tried before. When the tutor was explaining it and showing us how to create our designs digitally, to then be programmed onto the CAD embroiderer, it seemed quite a difficult process, however not as difficult as photoshop. I think the key is to play around with the program, generations, to get used to all the settings and flexibility that it offers. 

The CAD embroidery machine is a piece of technology I am going to really look into using as I do enjoy creating hand embroided pieces of work, so taking this one step further and adding the element of technology, perhaps combining the two is an interesting idea I would like to explore. Although I may not get round to using it in this project, because of its high demand after the workshop, itis definitely something I would like to experiment with further to help me develop and experiment in my own textile practice.

Individual Tutorial

Individual Tutorial

the tutorial today was based on the first half of this project. although I was a little confused before the tutorial about how to create and development my own response to this project, I now understand that by creating my own sketchbook and by researching the repeated structures, I am on the right track. Having said this, I am a little worried about the amount of work I am beginning to put onto myself. I just need to try to stay on to of it and keep up the momentum.

Photoshop Workshop 1

Photoshop Workshop 1

This Photoshop workshop was based on the basics of creating repeated structures in Photoshop. We learnt the basics of creating shapes and how to quickly put them into repeat.

This workshop was quite fast paced and everything was covered in a short amount of time. Although there was a lot to learnt in a short amount of time, going through it quickly gave us a chance to practice the skills we were shown and to experiment with them.

I enjoyed learning the basics of Photoshop and finding out that it is a lot easier to use than first thought. I had once thought that Photoshop was a difficult design tool to use, but with a little tutoring, it is not so hard to grasp. In a short amount of time and with simple shapes, it is not difficult to create both vibrant and intricate patterns.

I want to experiment with the Photoshop program more and am looking forward future workshops in the computer room. I think this i a very useful tool and I would like to experiment combining this program with other elements of this project, such as the tessellation workshops and perhaps combining ideas with my own drawings.

Repeat Workshop - Tessellations

Repeat Workshop - Tessellations

This workshop was based on the repetition of shapes. A tessellation is a range of shapes that fit together without any gaps or overlaps. I have created a collection of the tessellations created in the workshop, which I am to build upon and integrate into my own work.

I liked the form of creating tessellations as they were so simple to create, but looked really effective. The workshop had a very relaxed atmosphere which promoted our experimentation by not setting any boundaries. It was interesting to think that with very few materials, two A4 sheets of paper annd some pens, you can create some interesting ideas. This has got me thinking about what else I can use to create repeated structures and drawings.

The idea of tessellations is something I would like to incorporate into my own project, either as a background to work onto or incorporating the ideas into my designs.

Large Scale Drawing onto Drafting Film

Large Scale Drawing Onto Drafting Film

As previously mentioned yesterday, in our drawing work, we began adapting our large scale drawing onto drafting film. this did take a little longer than anticipated because we had to decide which piece of drafting film to put each part of the pattern onto, based on the colour we want it to be. 

On first thoughts, we have decided the colour scheme should be quite bold and vibrant, consisting blues, reds, purples and pinks. This way, the colours will stand out from each other, but still compliment and 'fit' together. 

Again, like when drawing the design onto paper, we tried to balance the colour split between each piece of drafting film. using two colours allowed us to outline most of the shapes in one colour, adding texture in the second layer.

Printing our repeats

Printing Our Repeats

As I have missed the last few days of uni, I was filled in on what everyone had been focusing on. Therefore, this entry may be a little scarce in areas, lacking detail I probably may have known if I had been at uni.

From what I gather, I missed a session which explains the repeat process and how get from some simple drawings on paper, to the finished printed 2.5m length. Currently, we are at the stage where we are beginning to come up with ideas for our larger scale drawings, A1 in size I think. These will be a combination of the groups individual drawings in their sketchbooks. After completing the drawings, and like in ours first repeat print project, we will add texture and small patterns to enhance areas and fill in the larger gaps in the drawing. From here, we will need a variety of black drawing materials as we will be coping/tracing the large drawing onto coda trace or drafting film. Each group will have two sheets of drafting film, which the original design will be split between. As an example, one piece of drafting film could contain the main outline of the shapes, while the second could be the textures on top. each piece of drafting film will signify a different colour in the print. So, including the background, the print will include at least three colours. 

When it comes to printing, each group will have a day and a print table between each group. the notches on the print tables are to help with the positioning and aligning of each screen. the 2.5m length of fabric is 6 screens in length, so it will take 6 prints to fill the fabric. Before washing the screen, we can print it 3 times. so using the first screen, we will print it three times on every other notch. Then, between the notches we will print the second screen 3 times and wash. after this, we will repeat the process placing the first screen where the second screen was before, and the second screen where the first was before.