Printing, stitching and pleating.....

I have a progress review for my course and wanted to make something that incorporated some of the things I have been trying out so far. Although we do not need to produce finished work for this review I am in the process of deciding whether I want to make work for fashion or interiors. I feel making a dress that uses some of the techniques I enjoy doing will help me see whether this is the right route to take or not. These pictures are the pattern pieces for my dress before I put it together.

Smocking, Seams and Indian Embroidery ....

I am very interested in old craft techniques such as smocking. I decided to try to make some embellishment ideas using smocked circles of fabric playing around with the smocking stitch patterns. I will be developing these using different fabrics and size of circle.

Smocking, Seams and Indian Embroidery ....

I have also been practicing Indian embroidery techniques, I have been exploring this more creating new patterns with stitch.

Smocking, Seams and Indian Embroidery ....

As I have been playing around different seam techniques I decided to make some samples to see how I can make a aesthetic feature out of seams.

New screen print ideas

Need to get back into the print room and i discovered some ideas that I already had in the back of my mind but I think now is the time to use them as my progress review is coming up. These designs I created by using pictures I took of lattice work in India.

My Work: Start or term until now

After struggling with my written work over Christmas I found it hard to get back into the making aspect of my course. I decided I needed to get back to working with discarded garments so I looked at some of the shirts I had taken from LMB. I feel I need to create more exciting seams that join the fabrics together so took inspiration from some of the shirts and some tutorials on Vimeo. I need to practice these seams to make them look as professional as possible, I do not want my textiles to look like an average homemade recycling project. I have also started looking at some traditional Indian embroidery techniques, the stitch in the picture is a Rabari stitch from Rajasthan. 

My Work: Start or term until now

Whilst producing these laser cut textiles I looked into how I can utilize scraps of fabric that are left over. I feel these samples could be used for embellishment on accessories. I also investigated flocking, dyeing the flock with Dylon dye to create new colours as well as splashing and dribbling the dye onto the flock to create texture. I was also excited to try flocking onto felt to get a double texture which was fairly successful, although because of the dye the flock stuck very well onto the felt which meant it was a real hassle to peel it off. In the next few weeks I want to look into creating my own felt out of discarded woolen jumpers. 

My Work: Start or term until now

Although the Burberry project was useful I found it made me panic slightly as it required finished samples which I felt I was not ready to deliver. The main theme for my patterns throughout my MA is ethnic inspired textiles so I decided to get back to this and looked into Indian Lattice work. I felt my textiles would benefit from another medium so decided to laser cut into my work once I had printed onto it. I found this very successful and I want to develop these samples further, I think they could work very well as screens or room dividers. I want to look into making frames to separate the textiles so that they can be layered up and you can look through and see the different levels of print and laser cutting. 

My Work: Start or term until now

My Masters course was set a brief to create samples for Burberry, they wanted innovative textiles that were based on the theme 'inside/ outside'. It was also a project which was based around the Millbank prison as this is the site that both our Uni and the Burberry headquarters are situated. I chose to take inspiration from the footprint of the prison which was a pentagon shape, also thinking about how the inmates from this famous prison had gone on to a better life in Australia so decided to seek inspiration from this too. I continued using kids clothing to create the textiles for this project.

My Work: Start or term until now

I have always loved kids clothes, the way they can very often be miniature versions of adult clothing. During my MA I am using discarded clothing to create new textiles and decided kids clothes is a good place to start, children do not usually wear out their clothes, they often out grow them. This means there are vast quantities of kids clothing discarded every year. I have been taking them apart and trying to think of ways to reuse the parts that are the most labor intensive.