THIS IS NOT (a craft) FAIR!

Hiya,
it has been a while since I posted anything on this but just to let you all know I will being having a table at the Govanhill baths on Calder Road so if you are free on Saturday the 8th or Sunday the 9th of December I suggest you should come down for a nosey.

Heres a link with all the information:

http://www.craftscotland.org/whats-on/event_details.html?this-is-not--a-craft--fair&event_id=1319

So far I've made a selection of knitted items along with some jewellery and other bits and bobs :)

Online Portfolio

http://www.artsthread.com/p/siobhansmith1/

well thats me got my online portfolio set up if any of you fancy having a look. I've set it up in preparation for going to New Designers in London next week. Starting to get quite excited for it now!

Degree Show

Didn't want to post this too early but as the degree show opening is nearly upon us I thought I would put up a sneak peak of my space. Hopefully, as the visualisations should suggest the collection is aimed at casual menswear and accessories. The viewing tomorrow evening is the city night, Friday is a family and friends viewing and then it is open for a week for the general public till the following Friday. Anyone in the Glasgow area should come along for a nosey at everyones work.

You may of been directed here after scanning the contact details on one of my business cards. If so hello, welcome to my blog and thanks for taking an interest in my work.

Business Cards

Have just ordered some business cards in preparation for the degree show and new designers. Just kept it fairly simple with an image of my work and my details. The clever bit though is that if you've got an iphone you scan the barcode and my details go straight into your phone. I don't have an iphone cos Im a poor student and all but Im going to get my mum to try this on hers as soon as they arrive.

Jacquard Samples

Tried out some jacquard samples a while ago using an old pointcarre file so these aren't the shapes and patterns I will be using in finals I was just testing out yarns and structures and also to see what they looked like dyed. As the warp on the jacquard loom is shared and is set up by the technician there has to be a warp on which will suit everyone - a white cotton. As most of my samples have dark backgrounds this doesnt really tie in with them so I had decided to dye them. I choose to use synthetic yarns in the weft so that hopefully the dye would work best on the natural cotton fibres and dye them more than my weft yarns.

 This pink nylon turned a purple shade and the multicoloured yarn just looked a bit darker after I had used the procion dye.

 I think the glitter black yarn has worked well and the blue nylon still looks quite bright and shiny.

the first two are procion dye and the last two are dyrect dye I prefer the one farthest left simply because its darker and makes the others look washed out in comparison.

Warp 8

This is the last technical warp I put on. I used this warp to compare double cloth to figuring side by side in the same yarns to see which i preferred. I hadn't put a double cloth warp on by this point and felt I had to just to make sure I knew how to pull it through and make up a peg plan for one. The first 3 are double clothes using plain weave and twills and the fourth is figuring. The reason I worry about figuring is because of the floats on the back which double cloth hides but then so would the lining of a garment. There werent many floats on the figuring sample for this one due to the shapes but there are a lot on the samples from my first warp. The double cloth definetly is a lot bulkier but this could be desirable if you were using it in something hardwearing like a bag or shoes rather than a garment.

 I think I will stick with figuring for a lot of my samples, makes the drape and handle a lot nicer.

This was at the end of my warp were I tried using ribbon in the weft to create dashed lines like in one of drawings. I dont know how I feel about this one - looks a bit tacky Overall not too happy with this warp.

Warp 7

Here I did another one following my one of my colour wraps but not matching the proportion exactly this time as I wanted to try some 'Colour and Weave' combinations to create little 'L' shapes from one of my drawings. I pulled 4 rayon threads through on every 4th shaft and a brown cotton through the rest this one was over 8 shafts.

I was told that although the structures could be used to stay away from this colour palette as it wasn't my typical colours and didnt tie in with my other samples. Or even keep the rayon colours and change the brown to a grey tone. I did choose it because it was a bit different from my other palettes but this obviously hasn't worked for me. No more jobbie colours for me!

Warp 6

I decided to put on another warp that closely follows 1 of my other colour wraps after I was quite pleased with my last one. Tried a variety of yarns and structures to get  different weights of fabric so they can be used for different types of garments. When I took these to my individual review these are the ones Jimmy said are good to go as finals I am currently weaving them this week with the warp stripes being repeated 3 times along the width. Its made of 2 warps - one rayon and one cotton/polyester over 8 shafts. They took me so long to measure out for final samples! Think the rayon one was about 4 hours and the other one was about 10 hours :o I used gutermann threads so that the colours matched my colour wraps and technical samples exactly so i now have an abundance of empty spools that Im not sure what to do with. Any ideas?

 This is just inlaying threads but its sort of how I was hoping the scribbling would of turned out think I will just stick to this technique as I know it works.

Warp 5

Well as you might be able to tell from the post-it notes on these samples I decided to keep track of which structures I was using as I am weaving. As even from cutting it off to bondawebbing it and putting it in my sketchbook I seem to forget and then have to work it out when trying to write my technical notes next to each one - much easier this way.

So I decided to go for it and do what my tutor suggested of following my colour wraps exactly. I must say I really enjoyed measuring this warp out even though it took me ages because I had to keep changing colour every couple of loops would take me the guts of a whole day I reckon if I decide to do this as a final sample.  Just tried out a few different structures to see which sat best with each other and which showed off the colours in the warp the best. The rayon is over 8 shafts and the cotton/floss I mixed together is on another 8 shafts. I was dying to try more of my other colour wraps as soon as I finished this one.

Also tried using the same colours in the weft as I had in the warp but it ended up looking a bit too bright and summery which wasn't what I was looking for.

Warp 4

Here I tried to recreate the wavy warp stripes that I had accidentally-on-purpose created in my first warp whilst combining it with shadow effect. Shadow effect is quite simple to create by offsetting the straight draft a couple of shafts each time u pull through the next repeat but i think it can be quite effective.

I tried a variety of twills for the shadow effect and a few different twills and satins in the nylon warp not sure which combination is my favourite yet. This nylon was trickier in the warp as it was a floss nylon so kept fluffing up - the last one had been spun slightly - but I just had to make sure I didn't beat down too hard or too much and with a bit of perseverance it worked.