Gestural Marks, Fluid And Expressive. Enjoying Overlaying Inks And Acrylics With Potential To Print Scaled

Fabrication brief.

Student were asked to donate 5 items of old clothing to explore this communal response to the fashion industry and sustainability. This activity asked them to wrap and layer their garments as a parcel to collate as a collaborative wall installation. The first image shows a focused drawing of one talented students response to this task. A beautifully observed watercolour study.

This deadly virus is very beautiful aesthetically speaking and would make an inspiring textile print. Perhaps the ‘pretty deadly’ collection could be developed for protective clothing? Or is that very bad taste......

Accuracy and advaced pattern drafting at Strode with the Textiles team. Expert FAD student work plotting and creating new tailored pattern blocks to be translated into cloth.

Developing abstracted compositions, cropping and enlarging to explore sections for repetition and textile designs for garments. The loose, expressive marks and gestural brushwork retain the spontaneity of the original line and translate an urban, edgy print as a theme of unisex wear.

Happy days....experimenting with mixed media and textiles.

Today...lace dipped in porcelain with stitched wire....fired!

Getting my colour mixing mojo on. Painting outdoors in the Spring sunshine feeling inspired by the fresh colours around me in the garden and from walks in the surrounding fields, lanes and woodland.I had forgotten how much I love this!

In the late 1980′s and early 1990′s after graduating, I worked freelance as a textiles designer and also travelled to South America after winning a travel bursary award in a design competition. I was inspired by the pre-Hispanic, ancient textiles of Peru, where the Incas and other ancient civilisations used natural dyes to create their woven cloth. I travelled through Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and down to the very south of Chile and had the best time. I researched natural dyes, spending time of the beaten track, living with indigenous people and learning from them. We picked roots by moonlight and gathered plants on specific dates linked to the Inca calendar, there was lots of superstition surrounding the dyeing process but also much wisdom and understanding of the life cycle of each plant and when it would give the best sources of colour.

On my return, I spent most of my time mixing colours from gouache and saving the match pots in 35mm film canisters as sample colours. This was pre-digital when everything was hand painted and drawn out in detail for selling to design companies. I had forgotten my love of colour matching and mixing and remembered my workshop space had literally hundreds of these hand mixed colour swatches lining the shelves for reference when recreating new colour palettes.

Thes images show my process of stretching fabric, priming, layering colours over a series of days with time between to ponder what colours to mix and add for balance, harmony and also composition. Enjoying myself!

Welcome to Textiles @ Strode This is a new blog for 2015 to chat about all things: textiles/fashion/costume/fabric/design/pattern/print/art etc that we do at college.

Mark making. Playing with inks, bleach, water, scratching, layers…..

Textiles students in full flow creating free-machine stitched creatures in dissolvable fabric for wearable art neckpieces based around sea-life and observations at the aquarium. 

Lockdown can be a time for CREATIVE isolation and I am really enjoying being at home with access to a table and sunlight to play and experiment with monotone mark making.