Project 3: Experimenting and Taking Risks

In this project, I translated the qualities in my drawings into material and stitch exploration. The main focus was experimentation and taking risks with the methods used.

The first method I wanted to experiment with was a technique called batik. I had played around with it in school but that was a long time ago. I didn’t have the right wax so I just used a normal candle. I painted on the pink flowers onto white fabric and then using a paintbrush, I covered the pink flowers in wax. Once that was dry, I dyed the background in a light green. It worked well because the dye didn’t run into the flowers.

The next experiment I did was cutting leaf shapes into the black fabric and then sewed coloured fabric to the back of the leaf holes. I had to be careful when cutting the holes as the fabric kept fraying but it turned out how I imagined it to.

This was an experiment with felt and velvet. I cut a hole in the middle of the felt and stitched to the white fabric. With the felt, I wanted to make the flowers three dimensional. I cut a 6 strips from the velvet varying in size and stitched the bottom them each. I pulled them tight and then stitched them to the white background in the centre of the felt. I feel I have achieved what I wanted to do with this textile.

This textile translates the paper concept I made. I cut some pointy leaves out of a light green felt. I positioned them on the paper and then sewed the bottom of the leaves to keep them in place. I left the tops to flow to give a three dimensional effect,

This is another experiment with felt using the drawing as inspiration. I cut thin strips from a light green felt and sewed them onto a darker green felt. I then translated the marks by selecting colours of embroidery thread and stitching into the felt. It was difficult to get the needle and thread through the pieces of felt that overlap and I ended up with a sore thumb but it turned out good.

This was an experiment with macramé. I gathered some string and cut them all into the same length. Using a wooden skewer, I tied the lengths of string to it and began to tie knots using multiple half knots. It was definitely a learning curve as I I should have made the string lengths longer. The design was meant to be a flower but I had to stop halfway because I ran out of string. This is a still a technique I’d like to play around with in the future.

For this experiment, I wanted to make some three dimensional embroidery flowers. I thought about what I could use to build that effect. I came across some wire that I stripped to use the plastic coating. I threaded the thread through the pipe twice and pulled it tight to create a curve. I then began to wrap that thread around the pipe. I only made three because it was very time consuming but it turned out how I imagined.

I wanted to attach the coloured ribbon to the fabric. Instead of sewing the ribbon to the fabric like I did on the left side, I thought I’d experiment. I used normal white thread and made some stitches into the fabric. I made the stitches loose to create a loop and then tied the coloured ribbon to the loops.

In this experiment, I wanted to use the layering technique. I used normal cotton fabric with felt and cut leaf shapes out. I then attached them to a white background layering them on top of one another in a flower design.

In this project, I wanted to keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone and I feel I have done that with a lot of the textile pieces. Some of them, I looked back on and thought that I could have done something a little different but I feel like I have some strong pieces of work here.