Project 8 - Stage 2 - Exercise 4 - Grids

Exercise 4

I began this exercise by experimenting with some pipe cleaners and craft straws from my kids make and do box but I found the colours really unappealing and verging on the offensive, so I decided to use some other materials to start making my 'proper' samples from.  They did help me figure out some good construction methods though.

I began my grid making proper making a large rectangular open grid inspired by a box of coppery supplies that I found in a cupboard.  It was difficult to get the thin copper wire of the grid to sit at the correct tension within the thick copper wire frame so I decided that my grid wouldn't be having a huge number of boxes within it.  I believe the same type of grid would work better with the outside frame made of a less smooth material, but then it would have lost some of it's appeal so I decided to persevere.  I also had some copper machine thread that I wrapped around the frame in two perpendicular panels, this gave a really nice effect at the point where the two sets of wrapping crossed over each other.  Also within my supplies I found a roll of something that looks like knitted copper wire sheets, I have no idea what it's intended use is, or even where I might have bought it but it is very beautiful and texturally interesting so I was determined to include it somehow.  The method that I settled on was using a fine copper wire to 'stitch' through the knitted links and then around the squares of the grid, literally sewing the two together.  It was a very laborious and time consuming process but I'm glad I stuck with it, the knitted copper really adds something to the piece that I think it needed.  As a side note, I later saw Cornelia Parker in  BBC4 documentary working on one of her drawn wire bullet pictures and was struck by the similarity of her technique, I also noticed that she had the good sense to wear very thick gloves and use pliers!  I completed this grid by suspending some interesting looking copper shavings within some of the empty grid squares.  I felt this added a degree of movement and interest that it had needed and rounded the piece off well.  I'm very pleased with this piece, and I very much enjoyed using textile techniques on a non textile piece.

I also found, sitting about doing nothing, some very long and thin pieces of wood that I guess may have been intended to be used in model making, with one I made a frame, bound together with yarn, and then created a simple but very full grid using paper string.

With the other length of dowel I created the grid itself from the wood, glued it together, and as it was self supporting I decided to do without the frame.  I filled some of the grid squares with some pasted on sheer ribbon which gave an almost stained glass like effect and then to add some movement I wrapped the grid diagonally with some eyelash yarn, not only does this add a bit more interest than using a plain yarn but I feel very pleased that I've finally found a reason for using eyelash yarn!

Something else that I found lurking was a roll of very small chicken wire.  I suspect that it probably should be used at a florists but I was more interested in it providing me with a ready made grid.  I wove my favourite dusky pink chunky yarn through the grid holes but only one thickness of yarn left it too gappy for my liking so I wove another set of chunky yarn through, this time in contrasting white.  This filled the grid better and I was pleased with the result.  It gave me a nice surface that is very pliable and I believe that it could probably be stitched into to add further layers of interest.  It's a technique I would like to return to in the future.

For my final grid I wanted to use the lovely thick jute that I liked so much in the previous exercises.  The really thick four ply jute seemed perfect for creating a grid with so I made a very simple square shape by knotting four lengths together at the corners, I then constructed the grid form the finer jute by tying lengths of that along the frame edges.  I did quite like it as it was then but it had a feel of the cargo net to it so I began to work further into it weaving through the grid work in a spiral.  If I had had more time I would've liked to try out making a circular grid in the same fashion.

Project 8 - Stage 2 - Exercise 3 - Binding

Exercise 3

I began this exercise by making a square frame of kebab sticks and binding them together with wire.  Keeping the brief in mind I wrapped it with different threads, from the very fine machine cotton to a yarn made from strips of my sons old t-shirt, also whilst thinking of the light and space between the threads I decided that some sheer ribbons would add interest.  I was pleased with the results, it's quite pretty, easy on the eye, non-offensive, but it's not terribly exciting or inventive or creative, so I decided to up my game a bit.

I moved on to making some more of these samples and trying to make them a little more interesting.

First I made a thick braid of the recycled t-shirt fabric which I them wrapped with beading wire, mainly to join the ends together, but also to stiffen the whole thing and give it a bit more body.  Next I began wrapping the whole the with rounds and rounds of self patterning fair isle yarn.  Unfortunately the whole thing wasn't as stable as I thought it was going to be and as the wrapping went on the nice triangle I'd started with had become a sort of squashed fang,

My second sample was made in the same way but using a mice thick braid, made from 4 ply jute, around the outside, because it's such a thick yarn to begin with I decided to forego any sort of stiffening and so to join it I wrapped the ends heavily in a finer jute string.  Once the frame was ready I wrapped the whole structure with lots of different 'natural' yarns, jute, sisal and hemp.  This time what began as a circle became more heart shaped but I don't mind the distortions at all, and this one in particular feels more organic because of them.

Finally I decided to make a really solid frame, one that I was pretty sure wouldn't suffer too much distortion from being wrapped.  I went with a really thick copper jewellery wire which I formed into a rectangle and taped the ends together, I meant to go back and find a more permanent solution than sellotape but I just couldn't come up with one, other than getting out the soldering iron!  I wrapped my rectangle frame with some thinner red beading wire, I was unhappy with the way this left jaggy edges sticking out from the frame, but it did give the following layers of wrapping some grip on the otherwise 'slippy' copper frame.  I wrapped another layer of red metallic embroidery thread which did slide about along the copper edges and bunched together leaving gaps so I followed it with another layer of wrapping, this time in a thick red/pink variegated yarn.  I really like this sample, but it has proved incredibly difficult to photograph accurately, my camera seems unable to handle the bright red yarn at all!

Project 8 - Stage 2 - Exercise 2 - Braiding

The best resources that I found to help me out with this stage were '200 Braids to Loop, Knot, Weave and Twist' by Jacqui Carey and a website called Stringpage.com . Both of these resources were amazingly helpful, especially to a reluctant braider like me.  It was the website that really inspired me, such concise and precise instructions for many different kinds of braiding and knotting activities.

After I'd conquered the braids from the course literature I found myself wanting to go on to bigger, wider, flatter braids, such as a 12 strand chevron braid and braiding with the lovely thick 4 ply jute.  I still found myself thinking about 'practical' uses for the braids I was making, I tried to forcefully rein in that impulse and move on to experimenting with many different braiding techniques.

Unfortunately as I'm writing this I've realised that I have sent my braids away and am left with a list of their titles and no photographs to illustrate them!

Here are the techniques I tried:-

4 strand chevron braiding in paper twine
6 strand in chevron braiding in natural fibres
12 strand chevron braid in sisal and chunky wool
4 strand flat braid in 4 ply jute
6 strand chevron braid in mixed textures
lucet braid in self patterning fair isle
kumihimo 7 stranded braid
kumihimo 4 stranded braid
handmade twisted cord

and my surface quality braids were:-

Hard - tinfoil, pipe cleaner, card making ribbon
Smooth - chunky yarn and kitchen paper dye waste
Rough - plastic bag strips and mohair
Soft - chunky yarn braided on a lucet to bring more volume

(photos were added in retrospect after I had posted my work for assessment and realised that I still had no photos of my braids alone, so these are a few of them after they were stuck on to my assessment boards)

Notes on Braiding 

I had originally intended to create some hand twisted cords to incorporate within my braids but completing just two of them took me an incredibly long time and I wasn't especially pleased with the results so I relegated cording to the revisiting at another time box.

I found the quick results and the neatness of using a Japanese style braiding loom for the kumihimo to be immensely gratifying and if I need to create any sort of braid in the future I believe that this will be my go to method of braiding.

The braids that I consider the most successful are those that brought together different textures.  I particularly like the combination of the very rough and unpolished natural fibres like the jute or the sisal in juxtaposition with the soft fluffiness of the chunky wool/acrylic blend yarn. 

Project 8 - Stage 2 - Exercise 1 - Experimenting With Yarns

In the introduction to this stage it is mentioned that you should try not to think of any practical uses for these samples.  This turned out to be incredibly difficult for me to do.  I spent a lot of time thinking 'what is this for?' and believing that braiding and these woven paper structures were all a bit pointless.  In retrospect I wish that I could've got over that feeling a bit sooner as I ended up treating braiding as a hill to get over before I could start on the real fun part which to me was the weaving.  Looking back I think I see better that braiding is an excellent introduction to weaving and a bridge between stages in the same way as making the yarn windings was.

Exercise 1

I began by trying out the woven paper technique by using some old discarded drawings of my childrens' because there is a plentiful supply of them floating about my house.  Using this fairly stable and robust drawing paper was a nice easy start and inspired me to seek out some differently textured papers to experiment with.  I went on to try out crunchy tracing paper, brown parcel paper, soft kitchen paper, hard plastic and some vegetable netting.

Project 8 - Stage 1 - Exploring the Qualities of Yarns

Over the course of this assignment my learning curve has been, yet again, enormous.My knowledge of yarns before embarking on this project was based solely on how they looked, if they were the right colour and thickness for whatever I was knitting I didn't stop to think too much  more about it.  My preference was for pure wool but in the case of yarn I have been swayed more by the price and more often than not have ended up with acrylic.  In my reading for this project, and the gathering of materials I have learned so much.  My leanings are still towards more natural fibres but I can see that there is an important place for blends and recycling man made fibres.

I have enjoyed very much experimenting with things I would never previously have thought of as being fibres, things like paper twine and raffia and also the wonderful selection of natural twines I found to be available, things like jute, hemp and sisal.

Part 4 - Textile Structures - Analysing Colour,Texture and Proportion

Handwoven tapestry from MMF AB -- "Karneval". Tapestry weave variant (gobelängvariant). Pattern designed in 1961. By Märta Måås-Fjetterström, Marianne Richter

I've always been fascinated by the idea of taking something that is essentially a straight line and transforming it into a flat plane so I was very excited to begin this section of the course.  This is really why I started the course in the first place.

I found the exercise about analysing colour and proportion immensely helpful, although at times I became frustrated that I didn't possess exactly the right shade or texture of yarn to make the windings into the perfect representation of the pictures.  I ended up doing four of these exercises and I can see that it makes a wonderful jumping off point for taking a drawing and translating into a textile.

Project 7 - Research Point

The Work Of The Textile Artist

The work of artists, designers and craftspeople is so tightly wound together that it has become very difficult to give the 'correct' label to one person.  It seems to me that the majority of people working in these ways take on so many 'jobs' themselves that to label them only as an artist or only as a designer is somehow belittling what they actually undertake.

Unfortunately nowadays it feels that labelling someone as an 'artist' is somehow insinuating that they are hands off, an artist in the modern way comes up with an idea and employs a team of more skilled craftspeople to make it a reality.  Equally to call someone a designer gives the idea that they sit at a computer and use expensive software to create an image that another maker will bring into existence.  Even more unfortunately using the term 'craft' calls to mind cross stitching and scrapbooking and that slightly twee approach to the handmade.

I think perhaps some new word is needed, some official job titles, less unwieldy than artist-designer-maker!

The two textile artists I have chosen are Abigail Doan and Amy Gross.  I struggled for a long time with this, trying to decide whether either or neither might be considered textiles artists, eventually deciding that as they both work with fibre and textile techniques that they must, therefore, be textile artists.

Abigail Doan calls herself an environmental fibre artist.  She works with recycle, reclaimed and found fibre.  She is best known for her Fibre Flotsam bundles and art installations.  She works as an advocate for sustainable fashion and eco-friendly textiles.  Her pieces are made from the discarded and disused and serve as 'a means to create sustainable solutions and visual links to the global challenges we collectively face.'

Amy Gross calls herself a mixed media artist rather than a textile artist but she works with fabrics, bead, applique and embroidery so to my mind she qualifies to be included here.

Her interest lies in taking a man-made material or item and turning it into something that looks natural.  She creates tiny environments and landscapes of roots, pods, insects and flowers in free standing sculptures.  Her work is about transformation.  Biomimicry has always appealed to me, something completely created but looking like it grew from the ground, and this is what appeals to me about the work of Amy Gross.

Both of these women are 'artists' but also far more than that, they design, they craft, they create.  Maybe textile art isn't accepted by the art world in general at an equal standing with other creative arts, but I'm not convinced it really has to be.  Although textile art might be seen as a specialization, there are so many smaller specializations within it that I feel it is perfectly able to stand alongside Fine Art as another umbrella term rather than being encompassed as all being art.