Getting back to Blogging!

Recently I have been unable to blog due first to numerous deadlines and secondly due to family commitments. In the past month I have used a notebook and the back of my sketchbooks to note down everything I have wanted to blog about such as sources of inspiration for my project work, designers and artists I have come across and interesting televisions shows I have watched and enjoyed.

Earlier this month I was in the library having a flick through some interior and textile design magazines for inspiration when I came across Susie Vickery’s very detailed embroidery work. I have tried a little bit of mixed media and appliqué this year and have found it quite challenging and have so been inspired by her work. It is in my opinion worth having a look at Susie Vickery’s gallery on her website. The inspiration for her work is something she is clearly very passionate about. http://www.susievickery.com/

Below are some images of her embroidery pieces:

Mixed Media Inspiration-Claire Coles

I discovered Claire Coles when looking through a wallpaper design catalogue, I love her beautiful embroidered/collage wallpapers. Some of the work I created only a week or so ago is quite similar in that I used a range or materials and machine embroidery to create a sample based on research in my sketchbook. Below is some of her work.

Mixed Media Inspiration-Alison Willoughby

Alison Willoughby is a textile designer, who creates mainly skirts as well as some other garments and installations. I feel her work is quite unusual, I like her use of appliqué, bold prints and bold colour pallets. I particularly like the two pieces shown below. The first because it is very vibrant, very textured and an unusual mix of materials. Although perhaps it is not so practical. The second piece I like because the combination of print and sewn circles all on a diagonal is interesting.

Textiles in Practice - Mixed Media and Weave

Every week at university is different for me at the moment as we are doing textiles in practice. This means I am spending each week doing a different workshop. The idea is to translate images in our sketchbooks in to fabric samples. So far I have done mixed media and weave. I still have print and knit to come. I really enjoyed mixed media and felt like the week flew past. Below are some images of the samples I created and what inspired them.

Whilst creating these mixed media samples I was inspired by the work of Alison Willoughby, Claire Coles and Shizuko Kimura who I have also blogged about.

Weave I found slightly less enjoyable than mixed media, I feel my work progressed quite slowly and I think that what I have produced is less successful than the samples I created using mixed media. Despite this it was a good chance to experiment and practice. Below are some photographs of my weeks work, I produced one sample based on the fruit and vegetable section of my research and the other black and white sample is based on the surface of the moon. Whilst creating my first sample I concentrated a lot on the colour palette and the amount of each yarn I used, to create the second sample I used only black, white and grey yarns and aimed to produce a much more textured piece.