Starting with the Future Past brief, I began the project visiting Archives and Museums to start a collection of drawings and inspirations. This developed a vast amount of initial research and ideas to develop from. The archive that inspired me the most was the Downing Collection at MMU - there was a range of textiles sample books and block prints. In particular there was a Japanese sample book from the late 19th to early 20th century, this contained a metallic colour scheme with carefully and eloquently embroidered and printed designs.
This enabled me to start producing drawings that linked to the Japanese theme, I further researched Japanese embroidery and techniques to see what would arise, however; this was a dead end as I didn't find anything worth using in this project. Although I did find old Japanese traditions helpful, finding techniques such as Katazome - "Kata means pattern and the pattern sheets are made of washi - traditional handmade Japanese paper - coated with astringent persimmon juice. Since washi processed in this way is very strong and waterproof, it was commonly used for umbrellas or wrapping paper before being supplanted by modern synthetic paper or cloth. Nowadays some dyers are using patterns made from plastic, but at Kosoen they still use the traditional type." This inspired me to create prints and repeat patterns to express my ideas. Another ttraditional method is Kintsugi -“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.” I decided to marry these two techniques together and produce repeat prints with a gold embroidery to allow my material to look repaired.
This was a really strong theme to work under in the early weeks. However, as the project progressed, the many strands and avenues of my research made it hard to pin down the direction of my work. This led to what I know was a few unanticipated and somewhat diminishing weeks of experimentation and sampling. So I traced back to my archive visits to rediscover what my initial thoughts and concept were.
Risk Taking & Experimentation, Creative Approach to Process:
Developing through to L5 allowed me to experiment and explore more options of risk and to push the boundaries - this was all a result of being inducted onto different machines and using them to their limitations. As I was producing and mapping out samples it became clear to me that instead of sticking to the repeat patterns I produced from my initial content ideas I should prehaps use the line quality in my drawings to explore what I produced with stitch, this led to distortion of patterns and prints.
As the project progressed I found I pushed myself further out of my comfort zone and I feel this really shows in my samples. My initial samples aren't successful whatsoever as I wanted to produce a repeat tile print using techniques seperately and creating a patchwork with the gold thread to link back to my content, however, by moving onto larger scale material and combining techniques I feel I have created successful and ambitious outcomes. Also by using new machines such as the Ethos with the Brother(stitch out) and by exploring the different ways this machine can work to produce samples - During this unit I also explored the Print room as previously I hadn't tried this, I produced gold foil prints with the Kintsugi (gold fixation) in the back of my mind; I then worked over these with the Ethos machine to really push myself creatively.
Contextualising Practice:
I often find my work difficult to contextualise. This was something I wanted to progress throughout this unit. Although I still feel I didn't research this early enough in the project. The analysis of designers has helped to develop my work into the world of Interiors, whereas previously I always saw my work in Children's boutique clothing. I decided to continue with the idea of Interiors and explore where it would take me without having an actual end product in mind (as I found trying to visualise my work into interiors distracted me).
Systems and Scenario thinking:
Throughout this project I have realised my development from Level four as I have developed successful ways of working - one of these being producing words to refer back to (Draw, Repeat, Print, Sew, Distort and Cut) these words help me to keep the designing and making cycle constant. Overall I understand my own practice work better and where it could possibly lead to in the future if I keep exploring the boundaries of embroidery as well as using other workshops to coinside with this - I feel like I could prehaps carry on with this project using my word bank to see what the end outcome would be compared to the original drawings.
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