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.

Design Workshops

Those of you who know me well realise that "design" is my motivator.  I love the process of design and more than that I love to teach it.  It really lifts my soul to see those who are terrified that they can't paint and draw work with paper, pencil and paint, cutting and sticking and working through the processes to develop something beautiful.

About 18 months ago I visited a group of spinners near York who are working towards the National Association of Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers Certificate of Achievement in spinning to teach a Design for the Terrified 2 hour Masterclass!  As usual I got the same remarks I get in most classes: "I can't paint or draw", "science was my thing at school", "my art teacher kicked me out of the art class", etc., etc.  I find it so sad to hear these tales of woe.  I start by saying that the design process begins with observation and how may people in the group have to use that skill at work?

After a very intense 2 hours we had a group of spinners with some lovely design work from which they could design yarn, knitwear, weave, crochet, etc.  One student, Cath Snape, went on to gain a Distinction in her Certificate of Achievement in Spinning and produced an amazing sketchbook for her final project, a beautiful shawl.

Some of Cath's work produced in the Masterclass can be seen below.

Make Works

This time last year I had been selected to be part of the new Derby and Derbyshire section of Make Works Website.  I was interviewed and filmed along with other makers and manufacturers from our region and the section is now live! 

Make Works has been live for a number of years and running successfully in Scotland and Birmingham and you can find out all about the organisation via their Blog here and Derby and Derbyshire in particular here.

If your interested in my listing please take a look by following this link and scroll down to see the video.

The team who interviewed and filmed me last year were so kind and put me at ease during the whole process and I'm pleased with the result.

My Workshop Programme for 2017

I've been booked for quite a few workshops this year, so take a look at my Courses, Talks, Workshops and Exhibition Page above to see where I'll be teaching.  There are a number of Design for the Terrified Workshops this year, including two Master Classes for Wonderwool Wales.  I've not been back to Wonderwool Wales since I gave up Pure Tinctorial, so I'm really looking forward to going back.

Design for the Terrified at AGWSD Summer School 2015

I was very lucky to be selected as a tutor at Summer School this year at Moreton Morrell, Warwickshire.  All tutors selected had been asked to write a blog post about the course or something related to the skills students would learn, to help prospective students decide if they should enrol on the course.  I wrote three posts,  which can be found here:
What is Design
Preparing to Design
Design Development

There were 12 students enrolled, 2 of which were attending for 2 1/2 days at the beginning of the week.  All were terrified when they arrived on Monday morning, but by Tuesday afternoon all were chatting and talking design amongst themselves, it was amazing to see the transformation!   I'd just guided them through a range of exercises, including colour studies, textural studies, collage, stripes, etc.  Everyone's approach to the design tasks were different as can be seen, here, in the images I took of their work on Saturday morning for their exhibition.

The two images above are from Anita's designs for a woven seat cover fabric inspired by the curtain fabric in the room the chair sits.  Anita stripe patterns resulted in a beautiful woven swatch that really worked with the curtains.  At the end she said she was no longer terrified!

 Ann's images, above, are inspired by shells in her collection.  She's a felt maker and her samples were stunning.  She is planning to make soft felt for fashion fabrics.  She had been quite sceptical, but began to really love doing the design work.  Ann, too, said she was no longer terrified!

Betty signed up late and could only get two half week courses and was persuaded to try Design for the Terrified at the beginning of the week and finish the week on Louise Martins Coptic Weaving course.  Betty sews and embroiders and was really worried that she'd be wasting her time, but said she was so, so glad she'd joined us and realised that design was the true beginning of the process of producing something.  Her plan was to design a hanging window treatment for her landing window that would be two sided, night on one side, day on the other.

These two images, above, are the work of Dunja who wanted to use the woollen yarn from her family farm in Wales.  Her inspiration was a beautiful image of a frosty tree with a bullfinch, it was a difficult picture that could be approached in a number of ways.  She isolated areas to produce a lovely stripe patterns and her mood board was a stunning example of how to do it.

The above two images are Elizabeth's work.  She's an experienced weaver who works in fine silk and her inspiration was one of the Shaun the Sheep figures in Bristol.   Her hard work lead to a range of swatches which she thinks she'd like to turn into fabric for a top and jacket.

Helena, a knitwear designer and spinner, chose a vibrant image of flamingo's as her inspiration.  She was looking for an image that represented a large part of her yarn stash and she succeeded!  She was inspired to spin extra yarn and try out some interesting knit ideas.

The three images, above, are of Linda's work.  She is a ceramicist, spinner and weaver, and already had design skills, but used the course as a refresher, her work was very colourful and resulted in some beautiful colour blended yarns.

Rachel's, a spinner and knitter, decided to use an antique fire surround in her home as her inspiration, which can be seen in the two images above.  Her plan is to develop a range of textiles to dress the room linking the flooring with the fire surround.

I only have one image of Rita's design work, above, sadly.  She came with a whirlpool image in black and white as inspiration which she developed into small tapestries testing out colour techniques.  She entered a beautiful little tapestry of a puffin flying to Orkney entitled "Approach to Orkney".  I fell in love with it, but it was at the end of the auction and I'd already committed to a couple of lots.  When I told her I was so sad it hadn't sold because I loved it, the whole group plotted to buy it from Rita to gift to me at the end of the course.  I was so touched I could have cried!  This is the image:

I think Shelagh might have been the most terrified of all of my students, not only about the course, but also about being my "Prefect" (all courses had an appointed Prefect to collect messages from Summer School office and help solve student problems).  She was the perfect Prefect, a great help to me and her fellow students!
Her plan was to design a fabric for a soft jacket in cotton and her inspiration was a beautiful field of wild flowers which, I understand, is still under development, but is getting very close to a lovely fabric.

This is Valeries work, sadly only the one image again, using a beautiful post card of lilies in very contemporary colours that had been the attraction.  As you can see she really took to the exercises to their limits and developed a range of blended handspun yarns in the exact colours.

I, too, enjoyed my time with the group, guiding them through the exercises.  At times it was a leap of faith on their part to do something that seemed irelevent to the inspiration and to what they had planned as the end result, but once they'd completed all the exercises they realised that all were needed in the process in any order and each triggered more ideas!

The whole group made friends with the on-site IT men and unknown to me they got a wonderful card made for me as a thank you.  And unknown to Shelagh they had a second made to thank her for her dedication as our Prefect!

Thank you, everyone, for being such excellent students and being a joy to teach.

Sneak Peak 3

Here's my collage of the fungi I'm using for a tapestry workshop on Saturday.  Collage is a good way to introduce texture into your design process and starts to give you the feel of a textile.
With the colour and pencil textural studies you begin to feel closer to your design and ideas will now start to flow.

Sneak Peak 2

Not my usual style of painting, here, in oil pastel this time, but gave a better feel for the colours, still more work to do!

Beginning to get ideas for the tapestries and the woven shibori.  The tweed, well I love tweed, so that won't be too difficult, so more of that later.

Sneak Peak 1

You will probably recognise this image from the Colour Palette for October.  I selected an area of the image and cut it because I wanted to show the overlapping shapes of the fungi and the lovely ferns.

This is for three projects I'm working on...

To start, I'm designing a range of tapestries for a workshop I'm tutoring for Melbourne Arts Festival on Saturday 29 October.  We will be designing and weaving a small tapestry in a day.

I've registered for the Sketchbook Project 2012 and have chosen Stitches and Fold which has filled up already!  There's still time to sign up before the deadline of 31 October 2011, although you won't be able to pick Stitches and Folds.  This image immediately spoke folds, and I want to explore woven shibori and double cloth.

Finally, the colours are really really autumnal and would lend themselves to a beautiful tweed or suiting fabric, which I love designing, so that will be explored later.

On the left is a quick colour study in water colour and a rough textural sketch in pencil and charcoal.

So now you've seen my latest project I'll pop off and work on a collage next.

Watch this space...

Creative Spinning at Alston Hall

I've just spent a very enjoyable week-end at Alston Hall with members of Bradford and District, Bowland and Craven Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.  There were other guilds represented, too, and in my group there was a lady from as far away as East Sussex!

I had been tutoring a Creative Spinning workshop with consisted of 15 people including one man and a lady of 92, who was quite remarkable.  The week-end began with a wonderful meal provided by Alston Hall, followed by a group welcome, before heading off into our groups for an introduction.

Saturday began with a little light design work until lunch, consisting of colour studies, textural studies and collage before I'd let them try any spinning techniques.  After much hesitation and in some cases, sheer terror, everyone settled down to work and by tea time on Sunday had produced a huge amount of work and were starting to get the design bug.

Below are just a few images of the work that was completed, to see the full range take a look at the Creative Spinning Blog

Stretching Yourself!

I've got another student working with me, Darren Kelly from Stoke on Trent.  He's at the University there and is studying Craft.  A few weeks ago he sent me his CV, some images and asked if he could have a summer work placement.  I took one look at his work and rang him immediately, as his work is wonderful, clean and colourful, which is just the style I like.   To cut a long story short he came last Tuesday for his first day.

I had suggested that he worked on a screen to showcase my linen transparent fabric and he arrived with a sketchbook with several ideas and he'd take a lot of time over them, including the detail of how they would be finished.  He is really keen on detail, which elevates a piece of work from the ordinary to the bespoke.

For my part, I want to stretch myself, and as a lot of you know I love colour, so I've chosen cream/beige as my colour scheme and, I don't know why, but the female nude as my inspiration!  Here's one of my initial sketches:

I'm thinking of paring down the design and using Theo Moorman, cream on cream.  But have lots of design work to go before I start on the swatches!

Have you stretched yourself recently?

Alison

Are Designers Influenced by Art?

There was a post on the Textile Designers Group of LinkedIn recently asking whether designers are influenced by art and artist which got me thinking.

I love art and, in particular, brightly coloured pieces! I met an artist at Banks Mill Studio's last year, Deborah Allitt, who's work is really beautiful, big, bright, bold and colourful. She uses texture in her work, too, which was also a big draw for me and she's allowed me to use one of her pieces as inspiration for a new collection, which I'll be working on after 100% Design.

So, in the LinkedIn post, apparently, some design studio's don't allow their designers out into the Art Galleries to be inspired by art during their working week, even for an afternoon during an "Art Week", for example. But, to me, that isn't necessary, you can be influenced by art in all manner of ways, for example, on my iGoogle page I have several "Art of the Day" widgets which I find very inspiring, today's Van Gogh piece was "A Young Scheveningen Women Knitting" which I've never seen and is really beautiful, soft greys and blues, sensitively painted. It would be great to use as a collection, as one of the current trends for A/W 2011 is dark inky blues!