My final Outcome..

When I looked back on my embroidery samples, I realised that my work appeared dull and not quiet following the theme that I had in mind, my embroidery samples were full of bright colours and not following any particular theme or pattern, my ideas were all over the place and I think it was clearly indicating that I was feeling very lost within my work, after having a tutorial, I felt it was vital that I needed to make these changes so that it became much clearer to both me and my tutors who would be marking my work. In weave, I was keen to make these changes so that I could see a clear difference on where I was going wrong, that way I was able to fix these problems. 

Although I worked individually, it was very useful to have group tutorials on my work because it enabled me to look and explore various processes and visualize other students ideas and there personal outcomes of the same brief. I found my group tutorials had a big affect on the progress of my work. From my tutorials I was advised to make a number of changes that were going to help the development of my work such as, colours, thread, yarn and material choice. 

My contextual practice research was vital to my understanding of the uses and variety in passimentrie. I looked across the art platforms to inform my visual research. Margo Selby's style of weaving was a great inspiration to me, as her work is a great proportion guide for me, I was able to learn how to create blocks and stripes of colour and pattern that were not only plain and simple but had a great amount of pattern amongst another pattern, an example of this is circles amongst stripes 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 sections of vibrant ones lift the whole sample and give it a completely different look. I placed these vibrant colours in carefully so that my samples were showing a link to my drawings, the work then as a whole was showing movement and tones through out the whole of my project. 

Ray Warren Fairground photography

Ray Warren's photography is a lot different to the other kind of art work that I researched for my project, his work had not one kind of textured media involved at all, but was just a simple bunch of photographs, that had been worked on top of on Photoshop to really focus on the movement and atmosphere of a fairground.
The main element I liked from his work was the amazing movement the images have, they come alive and look unbelievably realistic, when I look at his images I feel like I am able to jump right into the fairground or amusement park itself by the amazing quality of the images.
A great advantage that I like about his work is the fact that the shots he had taken and the outcomes that he is left with have beautiful and unique qualities that I can take and develop further, I was able to zoom in on my favorite areas of his work and draw my own style of marks inspired by Ray Warren himself, this is shown very clearly in my drawing work, as similar lines and tones have been made.

Katie Black

Katie Black was another artist the same as David Rogers that has inspired my drawing work. The above picture was my favorite image by Katie herself, the reason for this is because I admire the way she has included both thick dark lines with much more delicate and light ones and done it in such a professional looking way, I have tried to really focus on this myself in both my drawing and sample work as you can tell in both my embroidery and weaving samples, I have sometimes used thick yarns along side much thinner dainty threads this creates a great link with Katie Black's practical work. 

David Rogers Fairground artwork

David Rogers was a big inspiration to me because of his colour pallet, the exact match to my own, this piece of work by Roger was my favorite because of the loose marks he had created, this whole image is full of movement just like my own drawings, the key quality to this piece of work that inspired me for my own was the movement of the lines, movement is a big aspect of what I have looked into throughout this project because that is exactly what fairground rides are all about, fast movement and adrenaline. 

Margo Selby

Margo Selby is a well known weaver, her work is truly unique and she has inspired me a lot through out my Unit X project.
Her weaves follow the same kind of pattern throughout all of her designs, this is what makes her style unique and how people recognize the work that she does, this is definitely something that I would inspire to be like, if i was ever lucky to follow in her kind of footsteps.  
I love the way she creates strips of weave, within a thick banding frame, that follows the same trend through out her work yet the designs looks so different as you look through the weave, when I look at Selbys work I find different qualities every time they catch my eye, this is exactly the kind of thing I have tried to get my own samples to look like, for an example, in my weave samples, I have threaded in so many different components such as jewels, sequins, ribbons, threads, bands and cords, just in the same style as Margo, this is how I wanted to make my own work that slightly bit unique as no one else was going all out with the jewels and shiny bling. 

Sketch book and drawing work..

Drawing and sketch book work is very important to indicate the link of sample work to ideas that are expressed in a flat 2D form, after exploring my first hand research of internet and books, the images that I found for my inspiration were following the same kind of pattern, without me even realising, a midnight black was taking over my pictures, but with splashes of luminous colour here and there. For this reason to link all of my work I decided to follow this same pattern. my tutorials really helped me to finalise this decision, it was a clear mistake that I was making at the start of my project. The above pictures are just a few of my media work, you can see a clear link to my work and the picture below (which is an image from my internet research that I had been working from) i would like to feel I no the direction that I am going in now. 

Weaving..

      

The above pictures are my intake of drawing and mark making, my way of expressing the drawing side of weave, these drawings are my way to link the whole weave process together, the colours and vibrant lashes of pattern are the perfect reality of weaving, the reason that I chose the blood red, shocking pink, electric blue, the dashes of a multicolour rainbow and the sparkle of gold and silver, amongst the deathly black shadows was so that my samples are linking to my drawing and research work. 

My first initial idea was to focus on fairgrounds as a whole but as time has gone on, and my work has continued to develop, I have been more focused on the structures of fairgrounds and there landscape view at night, this is being shown through both my sampling and drawing. 

The weave that I have created is one large media piece, that's full off embellishment, threads, yarns, jewels, sequins, ribbons, cords, binds, bands, pompoms and a range of material is all what makes up my structured piece of work. 

The reason that I decided to set up my warp and continue my weft with a striped pattern base was because I wanted to create a look of tracks and structure, a sort of journey that you can follow, just like the tracks of a fairground ride, this is the reason why I also thought about colours, media and texture, I wanted to make sure that I chose materials that are going to give the right idea for my unit of work, this theme follows throughout my whole project. 

Embroidery week 2.

In the second week of embroidery , I found myself enjoying it a lot more than the previous one, the reason being we learnt lots more machines and techniques, I found myself starting to go off in the direction that I was hoping to lead in the first place, I could really create some vibrant and eye catching samples using these skills to show off my personal idea of passamenterie.
The Phaff machine, embellisher and a number of different feet for the industrial machines were all shown to us as a large group,  I felt I used these skills to a much greater extent, and applied them were ever I felt was necessary, Out of this bunch, the Phaff machine and embellisher were my top two, the last fifth sample was my design, the swirl effect was inspired by the decoration and paint work on both the fair ground rides and costumes from both Blackpool and Mosi.
I found the seven needle embellisher an incredible machine to use as the second picture below will show, creating something no other machine can, not one single thread was used, pulling up fibres from a range of tonal purple yarns, the machine was plucking up exactly were I was aiming for, creating a very textures fluffy fairground look.
The first sample was created on a ruffling foot on a normal industrial machine, I used a vibrant red lace and layered it up so that it build a chunky ruffle eye catching bangle.
The third sample was sewn with electric blue and turquoise thread using a double needle, sewn onto a simple light flimsy cotton banding, thick and again chunky, the perfect design for a structure band.
The fourth picture was a variety of  different techniques, the main strip was a pleated red cotton, on top of a shining pink organza, with ribbon cord hair pining sewn down to create a feminine ladies cuff, to finish this piece off I used red pom pom cording to give the sample a fun feel.

Embroidery week 1.

The first technique I was taught was one that I found a very delicate, one that I had to take particular good care with and make sure I did it in the correct way, a technique created by a small hand machine called the Princess Pleater, the 12 needle embroidery machine was one of the most exiting embroidery machines that I have learnt to this date.
I along with two friends from my class explored the city of Manchester on the hunt to find a verity of different kinds of materials, to see what worked best and what didn't work quiet as well, this way we were able to share and collaborate our ideas, this worked in a great advantage in this case because we were able to see the best results, also a very good way of time management and making sure we were doing the most relevant things to gain the most knowledge, creating long pieces of pleated defined materials that were the perfect starting point for a sample, for my own personal inspiration and route I was hoping to take, they would made perfect cuffs or neck pieces.
The second technique I got taught this week was on the 121 cornelly machine, this had to be my favorite out of all the cornelly machines, very easy to set up, to control and to my personal taste the 121 has much prettier and a better looking professional final result. The scrunching and pulling together look would be my idea of the perfect way to achieve a passementorie edging sample.
The two images below are two of my samples that were a part of my final outcome, the first was the most successful sample off the Princess pleater, created on a shimmering silk slub with a ribbon and cotton piping embroidered over the top, the most textured and unique embroidery sample that I created, this is my favourite. The one below was threaded carefully through the 121 cornelly machine the turquoise silk ribbon was then sewn into with pin drop coloured lines to give the piece definition and a finishing touch.

 

Over all this week I didn't achieve as much as I would have liked too, I felt that even though I enjoyed both the new machines that I learnt, I wasn't very focused and didn't get a great amount of work done, a few samples isn't the best start, by the end of rotation of embroidery I hope to have a good amount of work to see me through the project.   

Personal Practice - My starting point

The starting point in a new project is always the most challenging thing for me, as I sometimes dont no where to start, embroidery was my first area and weave my last, I want to make my work bright, vibrant and very eye catching, something that would make other people really turn there heads, just how I had been inspired and drawn into all the archives that I have been too. Designing a mood board of both primary and secondary research was a great starting point, from the photographs I have taken from all the different archives I have been involved with, with the choice of images from the internet I was able to gather together my ideas on how my samples are going to pull together, dark hints, with splashes of colour in a range of different ways and places were going to be the main subject through out the project as this shows a clear link from my photos to my samples themselves.
I started off this task by doing a range of ink and bleach drawings, this gave me something to work from as I was able to focus on proportion, where exactly should have dark tones and where should have light, it also gave me a chance to make my own colours and have a little go at some kinds of dying in the dying lab.

I explored the City of Manchester and bought a range of tassels, cords, ribbons and windings that were a perfect match to my colour pallet along with a various amount of materials, such as organza, cotton, silk, lace and polyester. 

I want to create a range of different kinds of samples that are fit for the style of neck pieces and cuffs, but ones that are different shapes and sizes is important to me, all linking perfectly to my research. 

I want to make sure there is a good amount of detail in each piece and they are showing off a good balance of my favorite techniques and proportion control. 

VV Rouleaux

Passementerie was the key word that I was going to be exploring. The top company that knew all about this was the well known ‘VV Rouleaux’ being a textile designer in practice, this talk was one I consider to be the best, being told not only the fun side to textiles as I no myself, but also the real side of business, design and production, being star struck by the designs, ideas and outcomes from the textile company ‘VV Rouleaux’ talk gave me a real insight to business of this kind in the present day, but also some insight on how things might look in the future.

We were able to see bundles and bundles of final pieces, designs, samples and embellishment samples made by this company, but one that stood out most to me was the horse hair weaved samples, this style of work sparked ideas for me later on in the project, I could consider in both weave and embroidery,’ tones’  the horse hair samples had a variety of different tones that shine amongst the piece, this is something that I could really consider, horse hair not being a very popular media to use, but something much more different and unique, this gave me an idea to use much more interesting yarns and threads in my samples, ones that show a variety of different tones, creating lots of samples that have many different qualities, so it does exactly the same job as what the horse hair ‘VV Rouleaux’ sample did for me, attracting or catching a customers eye that hasn't seen anything quite like this before. 

   

An amazing sense of structure, media, pattern, colour and design, these two samples above were my favorite and very inspiring samples from the 'VV Rouleaux' range, the two pictures will be images that I will keep referring back to during my project, I would like to take some qualities from these images for my samples in this project. 

Belle Vue

The last lecture of our research week was what I was lead to believe to be a very important one, one with a lot of meaning behind it. Two lectures based entirely on the very well known attraction Belle Vue. Claire Turner from the Manchester History festival and Michael Power from the cheltham library came in to our university to help our knowledge on the popular Belle View, two very different opinions on the park came across as very inspirational to me.

Claire painted a picture of a beautiful pleasure garden that was full of happy people that were well looked after, described as an amazing amusement park that was visited all year around. Where as Michael gave a much more gloomy opinion of animal cruelty, horrendous displays and nothing but an unhappy and safety worrying atmosphere. Both opinions were a brilliant opportunity for me to think lots more about what my thoughts might be on the park.

From this I decided to gather up more ideas and see how exactly I could link all the archives and lectures I had been inspired by to start to create a good idea of what outcome I want for my final project.

Both Mosi and behind the scenes in Blackpool’s costume designs gave me my perfect idea for a colour pallet, where as Belle Vue and Blackpool pleasure beach its self gave me much more of an idea about the different kind of theme and amusement parks, this branched on to me thinking of what I could make for a final piece but most importantly how I was going to get there. 
Was it going to be something that was flat and 2D or something much more extravagant and 3D, still unsure at this point, I decided I would focus my drawing work on mark making, combining both swirly lines and pin straight structures would be the perfect way to link together all the archive ideas that i had, to make it one big starting point before I got stuck into all my sampling work in both embroidery and weave. 

Blackpool behind the scenes, costumes and fabrics..

Blackpool Pleasure Beach gave the course a behind the scenes tour of the costume and wardrobe department, this was the real inspiring part for me as there was an extravagant range of media that gets used on all of the costumes for the shows. Hundreds of audiences on a daily basis view the famous world wide shows, and are dazzled on how amazing the costumes are, i was lucky enough to be able to see some of the costumes being made. The materials and components are what exactly make the costumes so beautiful and unique, here I was able to narrow down exactly the kind of colours that I wanted to use, and materials that would go along with this to create development work and final samples, by this visit it also inspired me for future ideas, costume making or designing a big possibility of something that I would like to go into after I have finished my degree. The above picture is components from the Blackpool archive but also my final colour pallet for my project. 

Blackpool Trip

The next stage of Unit X the whole of the Textile in practice course went on a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, we got taught the history of the amusement park including all about how the park had been passed down through a number of generations, we got told about a number of different rides, from past, present and also plans for the future, it was very exiting to hear what was going on with the park and was inspirational but in a very different way to how I was inspired by the mosi museum exhibition and archive. The qualities that I could take from this trip was the structure from the rides this created lots of lines and shapes that I could develop further into my project, showing a define link to my ideas for this project.

Mosi (museum of sience and Industry)

To start off my Unit X project, the theme that we are focusing on is fairgrounds. Brilliant timing to my project the museum of sience and Indusrty, Mosi had a special exhibition on at this time, they were displaying a wild and vibrant collection of old victorian fair ground rides. This was a great start for inspiring me because from that point I had a lot to think about from very early on, shapes, lines, colour, structure, media and materials. The first thing that I decided to do was to photograph everything that Inspired me, I later decided to choose my favourite image from the exhibition and do some quick sketches from my photos, this then gave me something to work from and could continue to develop my skills throughout the project.
The qualities that I decided to take from my first task was the colours, this would be an ideal fairground colour pallet for my unit, I also decided to focus on the lines and shapes from both my drawings and photographs, this would be something that I would then be able to continue and develop in my project and will show a clear start and finish point.