Unit X Blog Post Three

R E F L E C T I O N 

During Unit X this year I feel I have really challenged myself. I have focused on the project but as well as this I have tried to make decisions with my final year in mind. In terms of weaving, I do feel that I have pushed myself quite a lot as I chose to do something which I knew I wasn't very good at; designing on scot weave. Before this project, I have only woven twice before, and so I wanted to push myself and try a brocade which I could use as a means of 'drawing' over my cloth. I initially encountered a lot of problems and I thought I would never understand it, but I overcame the problems and was relatively happy with the outcome of my samples. 

Final arrangement of my work for the Exhibition 

Engagement? ...

I think I have engaged consistently throughout this project. The first three weeks of weaving were extremely full on and after I had finished, it was hard to stop myself from slowing down. Whilst on the looms, I was fully committed to the project as weaving was of course my main priority. In hindsight, I only wish that I had been able to maintain this work ethic for the full six weeks, although I think a small period of refreshment was needed after such a hectic start. In terms of my engagement within other aspects of the unit, I am pleased with the collaborative side to the project. I have found collaborating with the other weavers extremely useful and I hope that it is something that we can continue with in the future. Our group of weavers conducted tutorial like sessions and mini workshops, we also arranged group outings and we communicated a lot using Facebook. At the beginning of the project I didn't know how the collaborative part would come into practice, as I had first thought of collaboration as a final outcome, but in the end it was a really valuable experience and I feel that we connected by learning new skills and supporting each other with advice and encouragement. 

Discoveries? ... 

Throughout this unit I have made some discoveries through learning. The most testing task of all has been figuring out the programme Indesign. I have found using Indesign to be unbelievably challenging but I think this is because I have never been great at using computers. I have always been hands on and I find it hard to express what I want using a screen. However, using Indesign has informed my practice greatly and I now know what to do next time and most importantly; what not to do. Although I was quite pleased to actually have produced a basic booklet, having never had the patience to commit to doing it before, I have learnt some valuable lessons. The main lesson is to always leave around a week to produce the pages and bind it; it was a much harder task than I first anticipated. The best way to produce something on Indesign in the quickest time is to have everything ready first (images/text etc). I have learnt that images need to be at 150 dpi in order to print quicker and that I need to plan time for printing, sourcing appropriate paper and I need to plan time to make the pages into a book.  Additionally, over the last few weeks I have also learnt how to use the jacquard loom. By this I mean that I have learnt how to design the patterns, how to use the computer programme and how to use the actual loom itself. All of which is going to be extremely helpful next year.  Over the last two weeks I feel as if I have been producing things for the presentation rather than more actual work. I now know for next year the timescale of these tasks and how to plan better for next time. 

Learning how to put a design onto a Loom Disk for the Jacquard. 

Choices? ...

In terms of the choices I have made, my decision to make a booklet and present my samples in a handmade box wasn't timely, but I do feel that it was the right choice as at the time I couldn't think of another way to present them in order to display them as a coherent body of work. 

For this project I feel that my research certainly informed my ideas and development. However if I were to do it again I would stop myself from taking risks on yarn choices. I chose the turquoise cotton mix yarn as I adored the colour, but it caused me nothing but problems and wore my patience so thin that I ended up having to remove it. 

Improvement? ...

When thinking about improvement, I am desperate to improve my skills on the computer. Each term I get better and better but it has mainly been down to collaboration. Whilst making my booklet I collaborated with Lucy and Dacia and we each taught each other new skills using Indesign and Photoshop. I am also desperate to improve my technical knowledge of weaving, I always feel behind because I am in terms of knowledge and experience. Throughout the summer before the final year, I aim to read as much as possible and research in order to make the most out of the third year. My goal next year is to try double cloth, as I think that would really help me to develop my practice. Below is an image of one of the most inspiring weavers I have come across. Jennifer Moore produces vibrant double cloth woven pieces. Next year I aim to produce something along the same lines, I think this will be really important for my practice as weaving using two layers would be more suitable for clothing and a more refined finish. 

Jennifer Moore's Double Cloth Weaves are inspiring to my practice. 

Motivations? ...

My key motivations this unit were to weave as many samples as possible in the best way I could, I was motivated to keep my theme coherent throughout and I wanted my work to be the same in order to look like a collection for the exhibition. In terms of process, my motivation was to keep everything hand made to tie in with the Handmade in Britain theme which I feel passionately about. Finally, I wanted my project to look simple and be able to be understood. 

Overall?... 

Overall, I am pleased that I chose to do this unit as I feel it has given my work a push in the right direction. I have been able to try out new ways of making and I am getting to grips about how to present work for next year. I think this project has been a bit shaky for me as I am still unsure of whether I want to be a designer/maker. I feel I have a long way to go yet but my practice has been developing gradually in the right direction.

Presentation Plans

E X H I B I T I O N    I D E A S

Making my booklet

B O O K   B I N D I N G  

Cutting, holding, glueing, measuring, sticking, pressing. 

Making my booklet into a book has been a bit of a rush. Originally I wanted to stitch my pages together to make my work feel more related to textiles. I wanted people to want to touch it and pick it up and to be interested in how it was put together. However, producing the pages took much longer than I had thought, and so I only had a few choices when it came to binding my book. I thought that glueing my booklet together actually looked the most effective and so I made my booklet in a few hours using a quick handmade method. 

Developing my ideas

W E AV I N G    O N    T H E    J A C Q U A R D

Finished design on Photoshop for the Jacquard loom.

Today was my first time weaving on the Jacquard and I found it both frightening and exciting. Rebecca the weave technician taught me how to put my design onto the programme for the Jacquard. At 12:00 it was then my go to finally begin weaving. The jacquard is so much wider than I have ever woven before, considering I usually weave a narrow fabric of about 4 inches wide. It took a while to get going but I did really enjoy it. I found it really difficult not to snap ends, no matter how careful I was being ends seemed to snap everywhere. Weaving therefore took me longer than I had hoped and I only managed to weave half of my original design. 

Slow start on the loom but the pattern eventually becomes clear.

Hand Made in Britain

C R A F T S 

"Understanding how something is made, why it’s made that way, is more vital to modern life than ever. Craft is a language of material, provenance and making. It is learning the value of things. Sure, handmade, well-made things aren’t cheap but their value isn’t solely monetary. It’s political and social – to know how and where something came into being makes us more invested in it, so much so we become more responsible consumers. The handmade has unique aesthetic pleasures in itself but has also become intertwined with a whole bundle of different values, be they anti-consumerist, ‘localist’, green, or even just plain-old fashionable."

"What a country makes is part of its fabric, its identity."

http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2011/08/17/what-is-the-role-and-value-of-crafts-today/

Making the inside of my booklet

C H A O S 

Throughout this project I have learnt that making a booklet was actually a far harder task than I imagined. It took me much longer than I thought and I found it such a struggle. I began by using Microsoft word and realised that I just wasn't going to get the results I wanted and so I tried my luck at Indesign. I think overall I must have tried the layout at least five different ways. I then went into a tutorial with Sharon and explained to her the difficulty I was having. I was pleased to hear it wasn't just me who found it so hard to use a screen in order to design. She advised me to print everything I wanted in my booklet, cut all of the images up and play around with the layout on a table like I normally would. This was actually a very helpful process. 

After I had reconstructed my pages yet again, I encountered a new problem. Some of the photographs were blurry and I had to go back and change all of the dpi on photoshop. This was a lengthy task which I will know how to do for next time. I also found that being selective over what to put in the booklet was one of the hardest parts of designing it. After I had made a final draft for my booklet, I then had to source paper and learn how to use the inkjet printers. 

Producing the booklet was such a challenge, I worked closely with Dacia and Lucy to produce visualisations for my work, and we each helped each other to use Indesign, Word and Photoshop. Overall my booklet has taken me around 5 days to produce. 

Presentation of my work

M A K I N G   M Y   B O X 

Over easter I was struggling to decide how to present my samples at the final exhibition, this was mostly because my samples are quite small (only 4 inches wide). Initially I was going to mount them, but they just did not stand out enough. I tried several display attempts such as layering them up or standing them upright but nothing looked very nice or presentable. I then remembered the booking binding workshop we had taken part in before easter and so when we returned from the easter break, I went to speak to the technician about my idea of making a box. She described the various options I had and I was quite excited to start making it. 

As my woven samples have been made with the hand made in Britain theme in mind, I thought that making a box by hand would tie in perfectly with my project. The box took me roughly two days to make and I really enjoyed doing something new and learning new techniques. 

 Left to Right: Initial cutting of the card, taping the sides to allow the box to hold its shape, cutting and planning the cover.

When making my presentation box, I decided to go for the same colour theme to keep my work for this project consistent. I chose a neat black covering as I have used black in all of my samples. I then finished the inside of the box using powder green colour plan paper. I thought this colour would bring out the colours I had used in my samples and bring the collection together nicely. 

 Left to Right: Making the cover for the box, attaching the pieces together, finishing the inside. 

Designs for the Jacquard

D E S I G N   D E V E L O P M E N T  

As I finished on the Dobby looms in the first three weeks of the project, I have decided to use my samples as a source of inspiration to further develop some designs to weave on the Jacquard.

Using a cut out to help me design for the Jacquard 

Now I know that I want my designs to be used for a fashion garment, I have decided to make the samples on the Jacquard more graphic so that they will stand out on a jacket for example. I have also made them larger and scaled my drawings accordingly.

Using the Flying Goose Bridge and shapes from the Garden to inspire my drawings.

Unit X Blog Post Two

I N V E S T I G A T I O N S  ...

Where do my samples fit? ...

Since finishing weaving I have continued my project mostly by doing some more research. For us weaver's, the project has felt a little bit back to front so far and so I had produced the work but did not know what it was for entirely. I decided to use the easter break to concentrate on this and after speaking to the tutors about my thoughts before easter, I decided to explore the idea of it being used for edges and finishings on garments.

Initially when I began weaving my samples, I had thought that I would want to produce a jewellery based outcome, but as I was weaving using the yarns I had chosen and looking at the photographs of the japanese garden, it didn't feel right and I found myself becoming more interested in designing a piece of cloth. Because of this, I have found that my skills using scot weave and the ARM Dobby looms have greatly improved. In my samples I used two warps of three colours and I worked hard to figure out how to construct the patterns I wanted on my cloth, it was a real challenge to try and figure out how to draw a peg plan for the patterns I wanted, considering I only started as a weaver this year. Now that my samples have been produced, I am glad that I challenged myself, it was an unexpected development and it has made me more willing to challenge myself further in the project.

Considering branding and style? ...
In order to do some more research into finishings and edges for garments, I started by following Sally's advice and photographing my samples next to various fabrics. I wanted to gain insight into what kind of material worked next to my samples. This process really helped me to figure out where I could visualise my samples, and on what kind of garments. I worked out that soft materials such as cashmere or wool, really didn't show off the woven detail on my samples. My samples only really worked on garments which were shaped and not flimsy like a jumper and so I decided that they would work well being used on a section of a ladies jacket, perhaps a collar, or some cuffs, or just an edge of a tailored garment.

Market Research: Looking at brands such as Per Una, Asos and Topshop 

Into collaboration?... 
The collaboration side of Unit x has been exciting and interesting. I have learnt a new range of skills which were quite unexpected. To begin our collaboration, Dacia set up a group on Facebook to enable us to talk when we were out of the studio and set up events and meetings. The book binding workshop was really informative and it got us all talking about the possibilities of what we could produce individually as well as together. Before the book binding workshop, we also collaborated to learn a new skill called temari ball weaving. We each attempted to create some temari balls and found it a far more intricate task than we originally anticipated. We all participated in the task and helped one another along the way. We used a video on Youtube and some instructions on the internet to weave the balls. It didn't go as successfully as we had hoped but the collaboration of ideas and learning a new skill was still successful. So far through the project we have all stayed in contact with one another constantly. I think that we have all realised that we don't have to be doing exactly the same thing in order to collaborate, instead we can have meetings and share our thoughts and have discussions about one another's work and thats still a form of collaboration.

 plan of action?... 

With the remaining two weeks before the exhibition, I am planning to organise my time efficiently so that my work is presented in the best possible way. In order to do this I have created a two week timetable and written down everything I need to do on each day and at what time. If all goes to plan, I am hoping to create a box for my samples, a few jacquard samples, and a booklet using indesign. I think that this will prepare me for next year and also challenge me again.