This entry was written by Joanne who is currently studying textiles in year 13

Whilst visiting the Radical Nature exhibition at the Barbican centre, I noticed an interesting, igloo type hut, constructed out of layered wooden planks. The hut had an intriguing exterior, which links to my current project – Surfaces. This detailed structure influenced by textile response, layering cuttings of fabric into rows and stitching them onto a base material. The artist Eilean Agar uses a similar response with her ‘Hat and Gloves’, by layering wooden style chippings. My piece creates a sense of movement and uneven texture.

Eilean Agar

When visiting East London, I came across an indoor market, finding an old, worn, patterned chair. I wanted to recreate its pattern into textiles, so chose to weave the design with strips of fabric. I managed to find a similar weaving design which replicated the pattern, called Twill. I alternated the Twill weave up and down to create a similar zig-zag effect to the chair’s pattern. The contrast between the two colour strips concentrates on the intricate interlacing of the materials.

Whilst on the lookout for interesting surfaces to inspire me for my textiles project, a bamboo and wooden looking woven plant pot caught my eye.

I wanted to give my own textiles response to this surface, finding materials in different shades of brown to cut into strips and weave simply. This idea was very successful and reflected the original plant pot pattern very well. The pattern could also act as a parallel to the intertwining of plant branches.

At The Barbican, surrounding the actual building is a presentation of peaceful nature such as unusual plants and water features. As my brief is titled Surfaces, I found a spikey, long grass type plant, sprawled everywhere in an attractive way.

This influenced me to create a similar type of grass produced as a textiles response. After using a piece of green fabric as a base for my grass, I then machine stitched folded up snippets of woolen string onto this. This managed to create a randomized, spikey and realistic looking grass from textiles. The contrast between different shades of coloured woolen string helps to represent the tones and highlights of natural grass.

At my local train station, located inside was a silver public telephone point. At closer inspection I noticed the metal had an interesting patterned surface which I really liked the look of.

I was inspired by this to create a smocking piece which would hold much influence from the telephone point’s pattern. I tried to find a smocking style which most represented the surface, and I found the Honeycomb smock suited it well.

The intricate details of my smocking – the pleats and the embroidery, could even reflect the imagery of a mass of phone wires all connected in some way.

Tags: Barbican, Eilean Agar, Exhibition, fabric manipulation, Pupil Blog, smocking, Textiles, weaving

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