Back to school
20 Sep 2011 4 Comments
in textile courses Tags: design, mark making, Morley College
Back to school! Term started last week at Morley College – this year I’ve enrolled on the Intermediate Textiles Workshop, which runs for the whole day every Tuesday. A whole six hours – what luxury! Three hours in the evening just wasn’t enough.
It’s a popular course – 17 people have enrolled, so it will be busy if we all turn up. And although there are focus sessions on technique, like using disperse dyes or silk fibre bonding, we can carry on working on our own projects if we want. The idea is that we have our own studio space and equipment for the day, to use as we wish.
There are some areas I know very little about, like screen printing, so I’m looking forward to the eight-week block on that later on this term. Otherwise it’s developing and building on techniques I learnt last year, such as using the heat press.
Last week we had a more formal introduction to mark making, using black dye, bleach, wax and various tools to explore different kinds of marks and textures on paper, inspired by natural objects such as bark, shells, dried seaweed and so on. Some tools were conventional (paintbrushes), others less so (washing-up brushes, twigs, skewers, straws). See photo above for examples.
Then we tried to recreate some of those marks in textiles, using craft Vilene, paper string, raffia, wire, wool, calico – anything that came to hand – with techniques such as knitting, crochet, soldering irons. It was a very good introduction to encourage us to think about the main elements of art and design, such as line, colour, pattern, texture, tone, shape and form.
End of term
14 Jul 2011 4 Comments
in textile courses Tags: Morley College, study
Not just the end of term, but the end of year at Morley College. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed three terms of making paste grain papers, felt and baskets, doing hand and machine embroidery, embellishing and shibori dyeing with indigo, knitting with paper string, plastic bags and enamelled wire, with a few forays into heat transfer printing and constructing bowls from pelmet Vilene. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my Wednesday evenings from now on!
Our tutor on the creative and experimental textiles course, Debby Brown, was great. She would demonstrate basic techniques, then left us to experiment for ourselves, though she was always on hand to answer queries. She says that this “loose” approach doesn’t work for everyone, but given the number of students who signed up for all three terms, it was clearly popular with our group. Although she would tell us outright if something wouldn’t work or could be dangerous (what not to put in the heat press!), many times she would simply say, “Try it and see”. After all, it is supposed to be an experimental textiles course!
So what next? Well, I’m hoping to enrol on the textiles intermediate workshop at Morley, which starts in September and runs for a whole day every Tuesday. Quite a luxury to be able to spend a whole day working on textiles. But now I have the bug I can’t stop!
And over the summer I will continue working on projects I’ve started in shibori and felt. I’m also doing a lot of work for Makerhood, which is due to launch its website imminently, so you may soon be able to buy some of my products online!
Student textiles display at Morley College
17 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in embroidery, exhibitions, felt, textile courses Tags: embroidery, Morley College, nuno, scarf, students, textile course
I spent all of yesterday afternoon frantically trying to finish my nuno scarf so that it could be included in the display of work by students on the creative and experimental textiles course at Morley College.
You may remember that the velvet circles didn’t felt very successfully onto the scarf, so I had to find some way of attaching them. I originally planned to use the embellisher to dry-felt them, but looking at the scarf, I felt that some sort of texture was needed. So during the week I hand-embroidered some with French knots in graded colours from orange to yellow. The result was a lovely tactile contrast to the burgundy velvet.
I went into college intending to use the embellisher on the rest of the circles, but after experimenting on some scrap velvet I decided I didn’t like the effect – it was a bit flat, and the embellisher caused some of the edges to fray quite badly. So instead I attached the rest with machine embroidery, again using colours ranging from orange to yellow.
The good news is that I just finished the scarf in time to be included in the display. The bad news is that I didn’t have time to take a photo of it before it went in the display case. So the photos below aren’t great, as they were taken through the glass case, with all the reflections from the lights and camera flash.
Still, if you’re in the Waterloo area in the next week and have a few minutes to spare, pop in and see the display for yourself. Our tutor Debby Brown has put in a lot of work – I hope we did her proud.
Nuno scarf and felt pot
Sample album and embroidery sampler
Eyeglass and smartphone cases made from recycled plastic bags
Morley College, 61 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7HT
Textile tyro
07 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in paper, textile courses Tags: knitting, Morley College, sample album, spinning
There are some splendid blogs about textiles already out there, from which I’ve already derived inspiration. So does anyone need another one?
Well, this is as much for me as for anyone else, to track my trials and tribulations through the world of textiles. I’m a relative novice: although I learnt to knit when I was young, and did quite a lot of knitting in my teens and early 20s, I haven’t picked up a ball of wool and needles for around 15 years. I even did a course in spinning and dyeing about 25 years ago, and had cupboards stuffed with fleece, hand carders and drop spindles – again, this all got thrown out as I moved about in a rather peripatetic existence.
But last September I signed up for an evening course in creative and experimental textiles at Morley College, and became inspired again by colour and texture. And once more the house is starting to fill up with bags of bits and pieces ‘that might come in useful’, from paper and card for making sample albums to plastic bags for turning into plarn (plastic yarn to knit/crochet with).
Last term we experimented with making paste grain paper, which we turned into the covers of sample albums. The ‘pages’ inside mine are made of old envelopes, brown paper, fabric, and even knitted paper string. It was a good introduction to thinking about unusual materials and texture in presenting your work.
Cover of my sample album - paste grain paper with appliqué paste grain roses
Front cover of sample album
Used window envelopes give tantalising glimpses of other samples
Machine embroidery can be effective against a printed background
Album pages include paper from a Chinese character exercise book
Recent comments