constructive textile designer third year

Although, I plan to be a teacher, I do also want to be a designer on the side. In the holidays, I plan on weaving on my loom and even creating work and commissions for people. It’ll be a great side hobby to make more money. 

I really enjoy doing this, as it’s great boost for myself. I have such a wonderful unit of friends, family and colleagues who compliment, like and share my posts. It makes me feel talented and that I can impress normal people, who do not generally have any knowledge or interest in textiles. 

Considering, this is the first time I have created a website, I have actually really enjoyed the experience and I’ll definitely be using it in the future. I will be sharing the link to my website online so that more people can see what I am up too!

With this in mind though, I am also aware that as I go into real world and build myself a career I have go to be careful of copy right especially, but also privatisng my life enough that only particular people can view it. I believe this is necessary for the path I want to follow, as being a teacher you have to be quite private about your life for the safety of yourself and pupils. With reference to my future career, I have also built myself a professional CV. Although, yes I am actually a constructed textiles designer, I do not want to go into the designing industry therefore do not believe that I need to make my CV creative. Therefore, I have created one that displays my best attributes, knowledge with references to enable future colleagues to get an idea of my work ethic. 

More images of my final cloth in context. Due to the cloth being 4 metres long, it meant that I could only photograph certain samples without it being too bulky.

I’m extremely happy with the photographs, but also how great the cloths look like as skirts. I feel the White/Cream in the skirt, against the blouse is really complimentary and portrays S/S 17 really well. 

Over the last few days, it seems as though I haven't been very productive bur personally I just think I'm overtired and have become slightly unmotivated. After finishing my weave a day early, it kind of let me abit stuck on what to do next. I decided that I needed to photograph all my ScotWeave patterns, so that the tutors could see a clear development from my drawings onto the screen then to my weave. I wanted them to understand and see it as clearly as I have. Although, to a viewer, so many pages with ScotWeave patterns may seem abit daunting, scary or even bloody useless but to me it's not because I can start collating them into collections and I'm able to see where I've clearly developed a pattern. As I've taken the pictures on my phone, I've been able to clearly write each pattern down on a spare piece of paper (hidden); this is important for me, as I'm planning on entering Vanners in which they'll need to know the pattern I've used so they can programme it in their jacquard. Although, I've had the media and components for this file the whole time, I haven't had time to compile it as and when I need to. It meant that I did have to backtrack slightly, but nothing that's put me behind schedule. It's a shame though, Friday (tomorrow) is normally such a write off day, that I haven't planned to do to much. I will finish of my technical file and any wrappings needed for that and boards. Over the weekend, I'm extremely busy for a friends birthday, so I know I probably won't be able to work, but my evaluation and summary will be hand if so. This means that next week; my list isn't as large as what if could be: My first thing is to put the rest of my designs into context; in which I plan to take photographs of Katrina. From there, it's a case of printing out all images for moodboards and booklets, filling out writing forms online, finishing my cv and that's it.

BA3b // Developing from LO12 Recently, I made myself a brand new website. Although, I'm very fluent with using technology and update such blog daily it was quite challenging for me to make my site look professional yet really interesting. As the website it to promote me, it's important that I have as many images as possible as my portfolio so that the viewer can see as much work as possible. I'm using this website sort of like a blog, but instead there will be much less writing and it won't be a daily update. It'll be a way for me to upload photos of my work, in a way for people to understand my media and specialisms. From this, it means that I can maybe even think about selling my work or making commission pieces for people. I have made sure that I'm extremely accessible to contact, uploading all contact details such as numbers, websites and social networks. I'm happy with this website so far and believe it'll be beneficial for me in the future. Although, I want to go into teaching and may not have such a designing job, I do plan to use my time off in the holidays to continue weaving so that I can learn new things and continue my expertise.

(Sorry about the dodgy quality. Ofcourse, I have to be slightly careful about my promoting as their are selfish people out there who tend to copy. All address and links will be given to your prior hand in).

As I’ll be graduating soon, it’s important for me to be able to show my work professionally to assist with my future plans of becoming a teacher.

Research, technical file, mood boards, context, writing, CV. Left to do! Cmon 🙌

BA3b // Weaving Today, I finished weaving and cut my cloth off the loom. I did not want to waste my warp, so weaved as much as I could, by the end I had cut out the cross sticks and the back stick had started to bend. (I knew I had to stop!) Overall, I managed to weave 7 samples, all ranging between 18-23 inches long. Although, I wanted to have this as a long cloth, I still wanted my viewer to see the separate samples and meant that I could experiment more and more with ScotWeave and making patterns. This has been the most confident I've felt when weaving. With using only one media throughout, I knew how it would behave and I think this help me feel positive throughout. For the first time, I've had many a compliment on my beautiful selvedge, which is a proud moment for me as my edges are usually shocking. I've worked hard and to make this cloth interesting but to also show the viewer the link between my drawings, research into constructive practice.

BA3b // Research & Weave Interlink With this particular cloth, I've been so precious about the patterns and colours. As I've had quite a journey with weaving in this last term, it meant that I was determined to get this cloth as perfect as possible. In which, I decided to use only one media, Cotton. Although, I still wanted to create, perceive and visualise texture of buildings and environment, it did not generally mean that I had to do this by just choosing a thick yarn, but instead it taught me to be clever and to experiment heavily on ScotWeave, creating patterns that are warp faced to create the interesting lines which look slightly three-dimensional. By visiting Madrid, it enabled me to photograph a ton of buildings, some of which I was close up enough to see all the detail. This was key to me creating interesting cloths, as it's made me very open about how many varieties of squares of rectangles there is. It's made me think of structure, shape and scale. I think the patterns I've been weaving throughout my cloth, show a good understanding of my project and shows truly the link from my research to my weaves. As I can't draw that well, I've only made small drawings of the images I took, but I feel this is okay because they've influenced the technical and constructive way in my project, rather than the drawing which has then been informed by my weaves. [[ Research - Imagery -Weaves - Drawing ]]

BA3b // Weaving More images of my weaving journey. Throughout, I'll be using the same media for both the warp and weft. Although, I have previously used thick and textural yarns, I decided that I wanted this cloth to be extremely clean and therefore did not want to try anything that may cause error or timing issues. This was actually the best decision I've made whilst weaving and I'm so happy with the cloth.

BA3b // Weaving Although, I'm keeping my woven cloth as a length I've still separated each sample piece by weaving them differently. With this one, I've used the same pattern but different colours. Throughout, I plan to develop my patterns by using ScotWeave, so that I don't get bored and can also show how well I've adapted to the programme. I'm really enjoying weave this cloth and it's been quite a speedy process. I managed to weave 2 metres within 2 days. I'm absolutely loving the colours and I aesthetically enjoy my patterns.

BA3b // Collating Research The other night I started to collate the images from Elle and Vogue magazines that I had previously collected. I looked for images that inspired me and also linked, yet reflected my project and practice. I prefer making mood boards by hand as I'm not very digitally confident, I decided this would be the perfect way for me to show my research rather than just sticking it in a folder. Three of the important factors of my project include: Media/specialism - Weave (digital/hand) Theme - Shapes, structure (environment) Context - fashion/garment (skirts). By understanding these components it enabled me to easily identify pictures that would link to my project. In which I found, fashion which had been created in which I thought we constructively (woven), I also looked for fashion which had geometrical shapes and stripes on them, as this is key to the shaping of my weaving patterns and lastly, it was a necessity to look for skirts. With it being my context, it's important that I found skirts that may look similar or even have traits which mine do. Although these images show a variety of layouts and environments, I see my work fitting perfectly in the S/S brackets trend so will photograph my pieces outside to show that they should be worn in the sun. I will continue my research looking at designers, but I've found Chanel and Prada have for quite distinguishing factors that I can relate too.