Project 10 - Stage 4 - Making Your Textile Piece

This the final piece.  I'm pleased with it all overall, I managed to include many of the techniques that I had wanted to.  My tutor felt that the large mushrooms were too big and dwarfed the smaller elements somewhat, but that is sort of what I was trying to achieve, I didn't want lots of dainty little things on a minute scale, it would have been too fiddly and finicky for me to execute well.

The large mushrooms were constructed using calico on the outside, the tops were painted, the brown ones spattered with sepia ink, the purple one was decorated using my favourite watercolour ink and bleach and salt technique, unfortunately with age the bleach has yellowed slightly, but I am unsure what else I could have used to avoid this, I constructed tube stems from the same fabric and then for the underneath I made some yo-yo puffs, to echo the gill shapes of field mushrooms, from lighter fabrics and then stitched the whole lot together.

For the grey and purple lichen, I used the kunin felt that I'd been experimenting with in my sketchbook, using heat zapping techniques, this ate wonderful lichen like holes in the felt, although slightly singed it in some places, I then stitched on small patches of purple sheer to echo the colours that I had been so inspired by, and  stitched them down with white thread.

I love these little parasol mushrooms, they are made with a top of painted felt, stuffed with pink roving that was felted into a cup shape and stitched together very tightly to achieve the fluted edges of the real mushrooms, the stalk was made from beading wire wrapped with embroidery thread and glued in place.

The cage fungus was made from a twisted beading wire frame wrapped in cream mohair to give it some texture.

The whole thing is mounted on a bed of pink slime mould that I built from a base of quilted hand painted calico, quilted in organic circular shapes to echo the pillowy mass of slime mould.  I also constructed some tube lichen made from a puff paint, layered net and painted base, some small slime moulds from silk flower stamens glued into clear glass beads.  The whole thing was enhanced with some needle felted lumps, French knots, cross stitches and a little beading.

Reflections

I can see a continuous thread of development running all the way through my themebook, my sketchbook and then into my final piece.  For my final design I painted a very loose watercolour, gathering together all the design ideas I'd been working on up to that point and I think I remained quite true to that painting in the finished piece.

I find it hard to say that I managed to make all the right decisions, i question myself so much that I'm never totally sure about anything.  I can only say that I am content with my choices and overall pleased with the final piece, although I think maybe it should have been more circular.

i interpreted my ideas using my chosen techniques and the materials at hand to the best of my abilities I think, although I began this assignment convinced that I wanted to make a weaving, I'm glad that I ended up making the choices that I did.

I believe that my final design is both inventive and coherent.  I managed to carry through the ideas that I had during my theme book and I think that I did it in quite a creative way.