Floral Collars

Recently I have been working on a series of collars to complement the prints I've made.  Here is some of the work in progress of the orchid one, and I have one made of leaves on its way!  It has involved a lot of burning to create the black edges of the petals so my room smells rather like I have had a small bonfire in it at the moment... but I think the effect is worth it.  

Final Year Autumn Term

Here's some work in progress from the first project of my final year.  I'm finally delving into the wonderful world of florals and have been surrounded by flowers and drawing them for the last few weeks.  (It is a fun life being a textiles student sometimes!)  To the left is a picture of my little workspace at college.  I've been looking a lot at William Morris and vintage fabrics which has made me come up with some quite wallpaper-like patterns...not so useful considering it's another fashion project..so I'm trying to redirect my research to help me come up with some slightly more fashion like prints!

Inspiration/mood: free, flowing, soft, dry grass-like, hand-drawn, unfinished, country air, sun rays, vintage, formal pattern, excessive, exuberant, warm.

Here are a few of the designs ready to be sent of to print on Monday.  As you can see my obsession with birds still means I manage to include birds in nearly every one of my projects! 

Hi again!

Sorry for the lack of recent posts!  I'm currently settling into 3rd year now busy with a new project and enjoying writing the dreaded dissertation!  To keep you up to date here is some inspiration and the final outcome of the Sway fashion project...

Inspiration: bridal, moth eaten, dusty, Miss Haversham, ballet skirts...

Backstage the show...

The long wait

My lovely house mate!

Sway!

It's the easter holdays so time start researching for my next project SWAY!  This project gets us to focus on movement within nature and to translate these into textiles designed to enhance/restrict or emphasize the movement of the body when worn.  

Key Words

Billowing, flying, trailing, floating, erupting, flapping, darting, trembling, exploding, escaping, quivering, flowing, growing, spreading, fracturing, disappearing.

Having recently been given the 'Blue Planet' box set by my lovely boyfriend (knowing my love for David Attenborough!) I've been watching episodes as often as I can!  Some of my favourite images so far are those of the jellyfish.  They are such graceful deadly creatures and I just love watching the way they move through the water.  They make me think of silk balloons with ribbon tassels.  I thought they would be a really beautiful creature to study the movement of and to try and recreate that movement in fabric.  

  

Underwater fashion photography from Ari Abramczyk and equally beautiful underwater photography can be found by Zena Holloway.  

Illustration and Presentation

Here are a few of the illustrations I made for this project as a way of putting my fabrics from the Muse project into a fashion context.

After looking at my prints I think they are best suited to interiors so I've been thinking bout the idea of making a series of houses or bird houses which you can look into to see the interior of a room which would be decorated with my prints. The Robinsons Be Natural advert partly inspired me for this idea with this little bird hopping around its house.

My First Bird!

Inspirational Artists

For the second half of the muse project we have been asked to come up with ways of illustrating and presenting our fabrics in imaginatuve ways. To carry on the theme of peotry and books I've had a look at the work of Su Blackwell who creates these amazing paper book sculptures.

I also really love the work of Tamar Mogendorff and Abigail Brown. I love how they bring life and character to their cute fabric birds and objects.

Fabric Birds by Abigail Brown


Natural obects by Tamar Mogendorff

One of my favourite illustrators at the moment is Richard Tuschman. I just love his combination of images and how he makes them seem old, and like you are looking at them through a magnifying glass. I can't think of a better way to describe it!

Brian Edwards has also inspired me for this in project relating my work to fashion. I think that my prints have a childlike quality to them and I could see them working well in a dolls house setting like these fashion editorials from Brian Edwards.

And here's a few more! Accidently very William Morris...

This print was inspired by the covers of dusty old books, and the borders or pictures and titles in aan old book of Wordsworth's poems.

Season changes, spring and autumn

Garden birds

Love from Paris!
This photo is in honour of the end to our project by taking our work to Indigo at Premieire Vision in Paris 2010!

Muse

Thought I would share a bit of recent work with you from my Muse project! For this project I chose to use William Wordsworth's life and poetry as inspiration for these prints.

This print was deceivingly time consuming but I'm pretty happy with the overall result!

Growing letters-this print is inspired by Wordsworth's love of using words to express the world around him.

I wandered lonely as a cloud...

This print is probably one of my favourite, especially as it took the longest to make! The fabric is made from hand cut pieces of scrap leather and embroidery on a printed background.

When holding the fabric up to the light I really liked how the light shone through it leaving the silhouette of the birds and embroidered leaves.