Reflection

Reflecting upon the Unit-X Whitworth brief, I believe that I now have a larger understanding of my own practice. My strengths lie within nature, capturing beauty in neglected and un-noticed places - the texture is expressed through my specialist area of embroidery. However I enjoy capturing colours and using digital aid to create carefully compositioned drawings that can be printed onto fabrics enabling me to work the textures back in on top - this allows for a more contemporary and simple, yet detailed outcome, which fits well into the design of the Whitworth and the target audience of families with children. 

Initial Photographs of tree bark in the Whitworth Park, inspired by "Outside, Inside" theme.

During the Unit-X brief I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone, allowing me to strengthen my practice work. I did this by producing drawings digitally, that could be transferred into digital prints (which I have never tried before), this was all documented in a sketchbook, produced digitally through Adobe Illustrator (However after workshops I decided to create my boards for the exhibition in InDesign, another new skill!). 

As well as opening my mind to learning new digital skills, this project also taught me the learning processes of different courses. For example, after the peer review I found that 3D Design students, design a product and then sample towards it, whereas Textiles students tend to sample then pick a product and refine a collection of final samples aimed towards that.

This allowed me to think ahead, in the future for commissions it would be easier to work in a more similar way to 3D Design students, to keep track of production costs.

 From my initial research inspired by the "outside, inside" theme, to my drawings, developing samples aimed towards a product allowed me to make more of a connection to the Whitworth gallery. I wanted to carefully connect my work to the gallery and its history - therefore, I decided to make everything with 100% cotton, due to the gallery becoming an institute at the same time as the Manchester Cottonopolis era. The threads I used were all cotton, and the embroidery techniques that I used all had underlying connotations of the Whiworth. By using chain stitch I wanted to represent how the Whitworth is central to many communities in the area around, and by using the satin stitch on the Bernina, it was an adaptation of the screw thread. 

Visualising set-up for Exhibition: Range of Samples

My tutorials helped me to produce a wide variety of samples, and final samples for my designs. Initially I couldn't decide whether my combined samples of drawings and photographs were more successful than just my drawings with the embroidery layered over, and after long discussions I decided to use a range of both. I also pixelated the layered prints on Photoshop to gather the best of both worlds, these were also re-printed and again embroidered over.

Final Exhibition.

Future Developments of the project would include packaging design and how it would be displayed in the gift shop. 

Packaging and label ideas.