New Directions - Part 2 - More of the Design Process.

 I love the design process and can no longer start a project without doing some sort of design, so I was thrilled when I heard that the UK Complex Weavers Group had arranged a design workshop with Laura Thomas.

In the last post I introduced the first steps Laura lead us through and here, in this post, I’ll show you my next steps.

Looking at the images on my mood board the next thing to do was to explore colour, so using my favourite medium of watercolour I looked at stripes in the colours found in the images.  The first stripes are rarely the best so it’s well worth the time taken to paint as many as you can, in your favourite medium until you feel the colours are right, not necessarily exact.

The next obvious think to look at is texture and it was while practicing marks using different tools and studying my images that I realised that the embroidery on the coat was herringbone.  

Using colour and texture and the herringbone idea I then tried out different ways to represent the idea.  

So many people ask me why it worth doing these exercises, but it’s doing them that helps to distill the ideas and I realised that herringbone was definitely the main structure I want to explore for this project and use two different shades of dark blue, one in the warp and one in the weft.

In the next post I’ll be explaining where the design process took me, but in the mean time, sign up for Laura’s newsletter as she will be running this course in the future.

New Directions - Part 1 - Design

Now I’ve not been teaching since lockdown in March, I’ve been in need of new inspiration, although I’ve suffered, like a lot of creative folk, from a lack of motivation.  On the last two Saturdays of October I was lucky to take part in a Laura Thomas workshop, Design for Weave, organised by the UK Complex Weavers group.  It should have taken place in March in London, but Covid-19 put pay to that, however, Laura and Complex Weavers re-organised it to be online instead.

Those who know me recognise my love of design and it’s great value in producing good quality and stunning textiles, so will wonder why I would need or want another Design Course...  ...I’ve been doing a lot of simple woven structures for quite a while  now,  most of my students had rigid heddle looms, so any inspiration for them had to be with one, too.  So Laura’s workshop is timely as I’m in great need of a kick up the proverbial back side to get me looking at 8 shaft structures.

Laura gave us a starting point and lead us through briefs, the design process and beyond via her new Weave School.  

I’d never thought of mind mapping as part of my design process, but I found it really useful and will certainly do it again.

What came out the this was looking at colour contrasts.

I always start my design process with writing, usually it’s a discussion with myself about my inspiration, describing the colours, shapes, textures, etc., in my inspiration.  This time, though, it was a lead in from my mind map and began to distill my thoughts about colour and how I could use them in my fabric ideas and taking them forward to a mood board.

Mood boards are one of my favourite things about design, they help to distill my ideas and are a great way to present the mind map in a textile form and if you work commercially they give the client an idea of your interpretation of their brief.  These are always ‘movable feasts’, you may discover something, during the design process, that you’d not initially thought about, or the client my prefer some alterations.

I’ll talk more about my design process resulting from Laura’s workshop and where it leads me in more posts, but for now there is a lot of food for thought here.