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.

Warp 3

For this warp I tried to incorporate my colour wraps in the warp more, however, I only picked some of the colours I put on a light grey silk in a straight draw over 8 shaft and the orange and green stripes are over 4 shafts each. For the next warp I've to try following my colour wrap exactly as I am missing out the accurate colour proportions and tones in them. I did try to show the other colours in the weft though. 

I put the orange and green on a seperate beam and shafts so I could try 'scribbling' this was my first failed attempt at it. Im not sure what happened here but I think i loosened the beam off too much and pulled too much through and made it a bit loopy.

Here I gave it another attempt and made sure each of them weaved in each time. I found if I moved the warp too much either way though the base fabric would also move and become gappy. In the book I read about it it called this a supplementary warp Im not sure if I was to pull these threads through the heddles as well or if so should those shafts been lifted or not. Overall it was very tricky and time consuming and Im not too happy with the result if anyone has any tips or advice about scribbling it would be greatly appreciated.

Here I only moved the threads a little each way and it worked better but still not as free flowing and wavy as I would of hoped. Also was playing about with inlays here.

Tried a combination of twills one warp faced and one weft face to get the shiny orange rayon to appear like it is sitting on the surface to mimic another drawing quite like this and would work well for translating other drawings.

Warp 2

 This draft was a broken curved twill that progressed 2 shafts each time it repeated. I was trying to create the wavey 'S' shapes in my drawing.

 I was also trying to mimic the opaque white sitting next to more transparent shades and have tried out a variety of yarns to achieve this. I thought the embroidery silk with the white floss worked best for this.

Here I have tried the embroidery silk and white floss in sections by themselves. I didnt realise how elastic the floss was till I took it off the loom and it drew right in Im undecided whether I like this or not.

 Here I tried to add in colour from one of my colour wraps I dont know if its too much though. I also tried reversing the pattern in sections to see if it would make it look like the 's' shapes are overlapped like in the drawing Im not sure how successful this has been :-/ I think the combination of these 2 is what caused a fellow weaver to describe this sample as 'groovy' oh dear! I think she has a point I think its possibly a bit too much going on.

I decided after this to try just a section of that palette in a smaller area I think this works a lot better.

Tried another palette this ones a bit more subtle as well hard to tell in the picture but its a mixture of pale almost white shades of green, yellow and mushroom colours. This and the last work best I think because the pattern can only be seen in section so it isn't overwhelming

 This was the same warp but I redrew it and added in a white rayon it was only over 4 shafts but the colour sequence changed each time which made it a bit more tricky I was trying to recreate one of my firework drawings.

It does look like lots of little explosions if you squint your eyes a bit. Looks sort of fireworkish at least but it doesnt look too much like my drawing unfortunately. Overall not happy with this one, meh, would probably like it more if it was in colour.