The end of the Semester

After completing the weave rotation for this final semester I discovered that I really enjoyed weave and felt my artistic skills really developed in the hand loom samples.  I thought the samples were really creative and full of detail from the usage of different fabrics, yarn, string, beads and lace.

The colour palette I used was very interesting with very natural brown and crème colours and bright dark contrasting purples and blues. They’re not colours you would associate with lace but they worked really well and I was able to use really nice lace that worked well with the colours.

I wanted my samples to be really interesting and not just plain weaving, so I mixed certain weave patterns and also altered the weft loom by tying knots in the yarn breaking up the weft and the samples.

I want to specialise in weave because I have fun in creating the samples and want to learn more on the machines especially the Jacquard weave, as I only started to learn a few things in this rotation on the computer software called Jacquard designer.  I need more practise on it to get my samples just right by using the right weave techniques and the right kind of design suitable to develop into a woven fabric.

Below is a link to Flickr with some photos of my final weave samples:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70067575@N03/

Portfolio presentation assessment

I had my portfolio presentation this week and it was one of those things that put me out of my comfort zone.  I don’t like speaking in front of people as I get very nervous and talk quite fast and quiet, and even if I’ve prepared a speech I end up messing it up.

I enjoyed preparing my portfolio and as I put my best and favourite samples in from Print, Knit and Weave and I was able to see my samples all together in a collection, I’ve noticed my work improve over the year and was able to discover that weave was my strongest work because it was full of creativity and detail because of the added work into the actual sample piece. I have enjoyed weave this year as I'm not restricting myself with experimenting and I really like the final samples so far.

I put some silhouette designs from Print into my portfolio I really liked how the samples looked in the silhouettes and below is a picture of the designs.

The presentation went well I think. I walked in calmly and just was myself as I knew I had to be myself because that’s who people want to see – someone with artistic skills and a passion for what they do. I enjoyed talking through my work and I was able to understand my work myself through talking to someone else about it. It’s given me more experience and practise for future job interviews.

Weave...

Now I'm on Weave in the final rotation of Textiles for this term. We will be using the Jacquard looms to create very quick detailed weaves as well as doing about 4 hand woven samples.

This time in weave we had to learn to thread up the weave loom in the colours that we wanted to use related to our new project on lace.  The picture below shows the kind of colours I decided to use.  To make the threading up the loom easier we were put into pairs so we would be able to work as a team.  It was nice to learn teamwork and find out which way is easier and quicker to thread up the loom.  We chose light crème and brown colours which were very suited to lace.  We had to choose yarns that were strong and were very hard to break which was tricky as we would find the right colours but the yarn wouldn’t have been suitable.

In order to get all these new samples completed I must go in and work on my hand loom during my free time as well as my tutorial classes.  I am sketching interesting patterns and designs to create on the hand loom and I can’t wait to start experimenting with the looms.