My final evaluation for my whole Location project..

My evaluation for the second unit of level 5

The second unit of this year holds the title of 'Locations', the project has been split up into two sections or briefs to be precise.
A self initiated brief that we wrote up ourselves, a project I based on the word 'locations' and what that means to me, the idea of home, something close to heart, and what a more perfect idea than focusing this part of my unit on the beach, or what components make up the beach to be more particular. The second part of this unit is a live brief working along side a weave based design partnership called 'Wallace and Sewell' a company situated in the heart of London.

To say that this unit has been a simple one, would be very false, having two projects on the go at once has been a big challenge for me, managing my time for this task hasn't been as successful as I would have liked it to be, I felt I had a lot of things to do in the last few days leading up to the deadline, maybe things I could have prevented having to do if I had maneged my time better, by having gone through this procedure, I have learnt by my mistake and know that next time I need to start planning, researching and getting stuck into something as soon as its necessary.

I am very pleased with how the project finally pulled together and how my final outcome has been presented. I feel a lot more confident in myself, especially when it narrows down to the technical side of both projects, not only moving forward by going from a hand controlled table top loom to a floor electronic loom, I am now able to comfortably use the electronic floor loom along side mastering a number of new structures to weave.
I am pleased with feeling more content about my place on the course and looking forward to facing lots more challenges over the next few months.

I enjoyed working in a slightly different way than to what I was used too, for both briefs in this unit I began by taking time out to do some thorough research, this allowed me to get a good body of work together before I started anything more practical.

Moving on from my research, I then had an equal amount of time on my two projects, when all of the research was fresh in my mind, drawing from my groundwork was very important, this was the area of my work that I continued to develop all the way through the projects.
Both projects consisted of two completely different outputs of drawing, mark making and development work but all very highly valued to keep working on my project. The most important reason for me doing this was so I could refer back to my work to start producing my samples. By doing this I had allowed myself to be able to choose the most suitable yarns for both my warp and my weft for the two individual projects.

I also took part in a three week Illustrator workshop, a very exiting yet challenging task as this was a programme I hadn't ever used before, along with Scott weave sessions and a number of drawing tasks I gave myself.

Something I told myself I would like to do more of in this project was in depth artist research, so as I mentioned earlier on this was the first starting point for me.
For my Wallace and Sewell brief I looked very closely at Guy Rose and his painting work, his painting 'Poppy field' had inspired my colour pallet the most for this area of my work, I had also looked up a little bit about Paul Cezanne and his painting 'small forest'.
For my self initiated brief I looked at not only artists, but practitioners and designers too, the work by Richard Long, Sue Lawty, Poppy Binns, Jessica leclere, Juliette Hoffman and Zoe Howarth all inspired my depth of this brief.
The sampling part of both projects was my favourite as I was knee deep in new experiments, keeping my artist research close to mind as well as my own drawings and development I was highly satisfied with each and every outcome.
Both warps that I made were 6 yards long and 10 inches wide, my Wallace and Sewell brief was made up of red, blue, jade green and marine green 2/16s cotton and the self initiated was a plain cream wool yarn, I threaded them both up across 16 shafts, and on a block point threading.
I choose to do two completely different types of warps and selection of yarns for my two individual projects because I wanted two diverse outcomes, my cotton samples are flat and pressed, my woollen
samples chunky and textured both to link in with my brief.

The part of the unit that hasn't worked so well for me is the computer based work, including Illustrator and Photoshop, I found both of these programmes very difficult to get my head around, that is the reason for the lack of work in this specific area, and not fully completing this task another section I also found difficult as I have already mentioned was my time management, but by struggling with this, I know no what I will do to change this for my next brief.
If I could do this project again I would like to build up a better weave structure plan and work more on Scott weave so that I continue to build on my technical file and technical weaving sample structures. I would also like to challenge myself to working on a bigger scale again as that is something I have missed during this unit.

I am pleased with how I pulled things together by the end of this unit and look forward to taking part in a new challenge for Unit X as i have chosen the Pass it on, educator brief.

Jenny Jones Interior Designer..

Julie Jones is a interior designer. She focuses her practise on home weaving designs such as rugs and blankets, she has been the final inspiration for my own practise as this is where I can see this particular area of work following in the same direction as, I can see a lot of the same techniques and qualities as my own body of work.
I chose the below three images out of her collection because I was inspired by her marks and colour choice as they were very similar to my own. I like to make sure that all of my work links one way or another.

Finalising everything..

After I completed my designs for the self initiated brief, My second to last step was to wash them, by doing this the fibres will close together so that after the sample was dried I would have a  more solid fabric, also by doing this and leaving my samples to dry, the yarn that I had used would change my samples to a range of different kinds of forms so that they looked completely different than they did before I washed them, giving the samples much more of a structure to relate back to my artist research work.

The two images below are my final weaved collections, the context I have explored here is interior, and a range from that. The focus of my study will be blankets and throws.

Weave week two..

This week was my final week of weaving for the Location Unit, but as Ive chosen to do the Pass it on-Educator brief for UnitX, it could be my last week of weaving for level 5 too.
This week I started off by doing some research into what kind of structures I might like to do, I focused a lot on the honeycomb weave, spiderweaving and M's and O's, three structures that I hadnt tried out before.
The picture here below is a collage of the final weave I made this week along with the two photographs I took and was working very closely with to design this weave, by focusing on certain areas of each picture, I was able to unpick colours, shades and tones, to work out what kind of yarns I would need and structure I would choose, as we can see, here I chose to design a both honeycomb and M's and O's structure running along side each other to link in with the marks from my own photographs. I am very pleased with how this week went to plan, I manged to get five very highly developed samples from my warp all with a link to either a piece of my own work or some of my artsist research work.  

 

 



Weave week one..

This first week of weave for my self initiated brief was the most important starting point, began the week by getting my warp onto the loom and choosing a define colour pallet in a variety of different types of yarn to weave into the weft of my samples. I had to programme in the number of structures that I wanted to create for my samples this week so that I was organised and knew what I was doing. 
I eventually managed to get two samples done, for the two samples below, I used three different shades of  brown 2/16s cotton, four different shades of green 2/16s cotton, a cream and grey mohair, and a cream, brown and muddy green woollen yarn all for the weft. This week I focused on two structures they were a plain weave structure and a structure that leaves a little float on the top of the surface called M's and O's, I had never tried this pattern before and was a comfortable starting point to try something knew.

My drawing and development work..

Before I start to weave a collection of samples for my self initiated brief, drawing and development of my project is very important, it is almost vital that I have a body of work to look back on whilst I am weaving on the loom and designing my ideas, so I know exactly what colour choice I am using, I want to really explore into the most suitable yarns for this project, that would really suit my type of work in the best way.
Because all of the artist and designers that I have researched about have a very textured style of work, I have made the final decision that mohair and wool yarns will be what my samples are made up off, because of this choice this also relates back to my drawing work, the style I will create here will also be very textured, loose, woolly, something to touch/feel, jaggered edges and a little bit of a rough look.

The warp for my loom is just going to be in a very simple cream thick wool yarn, the reason for this choice is so I can bring all my excitement into the weft, and have a solid warp as my starting point.

The colours that I am going to use for my weft are, brown, green, cream, grey, blue and white, I will use a variety of different shades of these colours when choosing my yarn to create different shades, shadows and tones, the yarn that I will use will be mostly wool and mohair, but I will have some areas of a 2/16s cotton to create more define and delicate areas, by using a wide selection of yarns, I would like to create more depth of my samples, so that each section will relate back to either a part of a drawing or another part of my photos, by looking back on my artist research this will also influence what yarn type, what colours and what patterns I will use.  
 
The structures I am going to use are going to be, plain weave, twill, honeycomb, M's and O's, spider weaving and a weave that can really bring my weft to the surface.