Weave was amazing.

The past two weeks spent sitting at my loom were challenging, at times confusing, therapeutic and just generally loads of fun.

The idea of creating a completely new piece of cloth from scratch is incredible. Something that began in my mind is now a an existing, tactile and functional sample of cloth.

Day one of working at the looms was daunting and it took me a while to fully understand and get a grip of how to weave. Threading the heddles was a fiddly and intricate task in which I made lots of mistakes which I have defiantly learnt from. It took my tutor a while to recover my dropped heddles and snapped threads.

After learning the basic ‘under over’ weave pattern I enjoyed trying out all the trickier more intricate ones. I began weaving in small traditional thin threads and muted tones but as I became more familiar with the looms I began using colors and yarn I normally wouldn’t. In doing this I got a wide array of different fabrics and patterns. Testing out different looms everyday also helped me learn my way around a loom much better and gave me a wider glimpse at how different a single piece of fabric can be purely based on the loom it was woven on.

I wove my last sample today and will return later to cut my fabrics away. I think I can honestly say I’m sorry this block is over as I really enjoyed weave.

Personally, I found the second week of our print block much more enjoyable. In this last week, we learnt how to silk screen print.

We spent a day cutting stencils based on our box of objects and former research. I based my stencils mainly on the straw and barbed wire in my box, I thought these two objects had interesting and contrasting silhouettes. I also incorporated peacock feathers for their strong and earthy colours.

On the second day we were taught to mix dyes in the dye lab, pin our sheets of silk to the table, mix dyes together to create the exact shades we were looking for and to spread dyes evenly across the screen creating the print we desired.

I also experimented painting dyed directly onto a sheet of glass and printing. I enjoyed the appearance of this method more as it gave me a chance to print more openly and freely.

Although I enjoyed this section of print more than digital I found being completely unfamiliar with silk screen printing limited me in the cutting of my stencils and mixing of my dyes as I wasn’t entirely sure of the expected outcome and didn’t know what to aim towards, I like to hope that my prints got better as the week went along.

I have just finished my first technical block! In this block I learnt to do things I had never done before. Our two week block was split into one week of digital printing and a second week of silk screen printing.

Being the only person in my class who had never before used photoshop I found this very challenging. I find working on computers difficult to manoeuvre and quite honestly.. boring. So as you can imagine I did not have high hopes for the coming photoshop orientated week. But with the help of my teacher and the other girls in my class I began to slowly get the hang of it.

We were initially shown how to work our way around the photoshop app before scanning our mark makings from our swatch books. These marks, which I put so little time or effort into were suddenly transformed. We were taught to pattern repeat, mirror, change the colour of our new patterns, ect. All of a sudden, I had a professional and impressive looking pattern, which I was very proud of! Seeing the potential of photoshop and what can be produced when you play around a little bit gave me a new found respect and interest for the block I previously deemed uninteresting and confusing. I realised how important it is for us, as textiles students, to be taught to use photoshop.

On the second day of digital print we were taught to cut and trim our new patterns and turn the into clothing for fashion illustrations. We traced photos from magazines and scanned them. We had to make four patterns and at least one fashion illustration. I did find this block difficult and hard to get the hang of and it took me way too long to complete the set work, but I’m so happy I have now done it, and have a much better understanding of photoshop and digital print under my belt!

These are some patterns I created on photoshop using scans from my swatch book:

Our second project we were given was a very interesting one. We were told to gather a collection of objects that we find visually inspiring. In doing this and deciding on our objects we had to consider colour,texture and form. These objects were to inform our drawing throughout the beginning of the autumn term.

Living in a flat in London away from home I had absolutely no objects of sentimental value. After thinking long and hard about the objects to which I would have to refer to for the following few weeks I decided on some which reminded of the small farm I grew up on. I thought that in doing this a more personal side would be added to everything I make in Chelsea while settling in.

My objects included; bunches of hay and straw, I thought by looking past the mundane and seemingly dullness of this everyday object you see a multitude of golds, ochres, and beautiful greens. I also included a roll of barbed wire for its form, a strip of metal chicken wire for its interesting pattern, a bunch of peacock feathers for their immensely wonderful and iridescent colours, cattle tags as I wanted to incorporate something unnatural and manmade and other smaller objects such as wires, screws and bolts.

Heading into a part of London I had never been to, with a group of people I had never met before seemed daunting.

But as a group of textiles students walking through Soho, the numerous fabric shops and a shared love of anything textiles made it much easier for us to get to know one another.

As an Irish girl, new to London, I thought this project was such an amazing way to both see London and also get to know others from my course.

What with Chinatown, Covent Garden and the centre of Soho itself, the area I was given was such an interesting place to observe and draw. I found even simply sitting and sketching passersby worthwhile as London is filled with such amazingly unique people.

After filling an entire sketchpad with drawings, sketches and photos from Soho, and compiling an entire Rough Guide of London, the book I brought away is something I’ll keep forever, such a nice way to look back and remember my first week in Chelsea School of Art.