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.