Stitch block

I REALLY REALLY DISLIKE SEWING MACHINES...
I spent my foundation degree hating them, and I have spent my stitch block falling out with them yet again. My worst enemy. However I do enjoy stitch as it is so broad. 

Starting from scratch didn't help me, just made me go through the same process of frustration. 

It took me way longer than expected to complete my samples because every time the bobbin thread ran out for some reason it took me ages to thread it through again.

I have learnt many new techniques of stitch through this block. to begin with we were shown various ways of creating looks which represent our drawings. My drawings were of my pop up collection of my jewellery focusing on chains and interlocking.

I kept my colour pallet to black and white after some thought of using oranges and pinks because I had some nice fabrics in that colour which I have done some development work with. I have experimented melting plastics, using the heat press, creating my own yarns and stencil cutting.








Need to upload pictures of my samples and development.

Print block

Yet to upload print samples

Weave block

The looms are amazing, no faffing...

My colour scheme for weave is green and blue. The fluorescent bright neons you see everywhere in London but not necessary for fashion or interior based products. More like emergency service vehicles and uniforms, high visibility clothing and signs that stand our for important reasons and safety measures. I put together some initial wrappings using colours I already had. Then collected bits and bobs to use (ribbons, threads etc..)

The outcome for weave is soo good! I picked it up instantly however the process was not very instant at all! Just to produce a 10cm sample took about 2 and a half hours! One error I made when it came to choosing yarns and threads was the thickness of the yarns. Mine were mostly very thin so took longer to process and sometimes changed the look of the pattern. 

After being given an introduction to the looms I started to experiment with how the looms work, what patterns occur if you lift which levers. Having to jot down the numbers in a column to refer to as my memory isn't so good. because my yarns were so thing I double threaded them before releasing the levers and then pushing down the reed with the batten. This created looping yarns at the end of my weaves so when it came to cutting them off and neatening them up if my samples were small they would loosen. if only there was a way of locking them off at the end like in knit.

This is a basic guide to follow patterns from, the ones I liked most were the windmill effect, irrerular hopscotch and diamond weave.

Doing the wrappings was beneficial as they allowed me to experiment with colour proportion and see what colours work best with each other.

During this block I visited some fabric shops to get samples of different types of fabric to create a swatch file swatch file and  pull apart the threads and see what type of fibres they consist of and how they are constructed.

I wish I spent more time on the looms and experimented further. these are my samples below.