Chapters 5 & 6 - Progressing to fabric

I've not taken a photograph of my fabrics as there are so many small pieces of sheers, nylons and silks. I also had great fun using my gelli-plate to do some mono-printing, I painted bondaweb and ironed it onto fabric, and I made a snippet fabric from small pieces of threads and ribbons. The results will be seen in all the samples that follow.

So ... onto Chapter 6 and my bonded samples

Fig. 1

A symmetric design based on the Islamic tiles using plain cotton as background fabric, topped with a monoprinted cotton and finally a pale blue/grey silk.

Fig. 2

Another symmetric design, this time using the silk as a background with another monoprinted cotton as a first layer, topped with my snippet cloth (threads sandwiched between cotton and a fine net.

 Fig. 3

The background fabric for this asymmetric design is a piece of muslin which I had used to clean up my gelli-plate, topped with yet another monoprinted cotton and a piece of baby-wipe which again had been used to clean up after a painting session. Once attached with bondaweb the baby-wipe feels just like fabric and the paints have made an interesting pattern.

Fig. 4

Yet another monoprinted cotton as a background for my starfish (who in this piece appear to be dancing!). The large star is the cotton topped with painted bondaweb and the smaller star is a piece of white chiffon which I dyed with Brusho.

Chapter 4: Black is black

 Fig. 1

 Fig. 2

 Fig. 3

 Fig. 4

Fig. 5

I don't have much to say about this part of the chapter - other than that it's finished. I can't say that I enjoyed the exercise at all, though I think that some of the designs have turned out to be OK. 

 Fig. 6

 Fig. 7

Fig. 8

Aah ... so it was maybe just the fact that it was black paper that I didn't enjoy (let's not think too much about why that might be!) as this exercise was much more fun. Again I'm sticking to the Islamic tiles for the symmetric designs and the starfish for the asymmetric ones. I did make a couple of asymmetric designs from non-starfish shapes too though. I enjoyed trying to find ways to put my stars together in asymmetric ways and I think that, again, those where I've used negative spaces have produced some interesting designs.

Chapter 3 - Design development

This chapter was all about making patterns out of the stars I'd found in the last two chapters.

 1: some rough sketches

2: Design sheet A

The designs on Sheet A were relatively easy to manage though I'm not sure how successful the distortions into other shapes were. The star has fitted into the triangle but I wouldn't personally see this as a star shape any more, but as I was no happier with my other attempts (in picture 1) these are what ended up on my page.

3: Repeat patterns

4: Design sheet B

5: Design sheet B ctd

I am trying to follow my two main strands of inspiration within these sheets - the Islamic tiles which I saw at the British Museum, and the asymmetric starfish so I tried out border patterns using both sources.

 6: Design sheet C

7: Design sheet C ctd

 

I found some of the suggestions for patterns difficult to get my head around - particularly when it came to the complex counterchange for Design sheet C. For this one I started by trying to replicate the example in the course notes but even found this tricky to do for some reason.

 

Although the Islamic tile design at the bottom of image #6 is a complex one consisting of several different 8-pointed stars, I'm much happier with the patterns that have resulted. I also think that some of the patterns made up from the negative space pieces left over from earlier designs (in image #7) are quite interesting.