A Day In The Life #7

All day I've sewn and sewn and sewn! My big exhibition scarf is finally coming together, The angelina fibers and needle felted bacterial petri dishes I had are all sewn onto the scarf, Of course with the scarf being 4.5 meter I had not created enough to cover the whole scarf as it is huge! Tonight and tomorrow I shall be creating more needle felting's and more angelina fibers to sew onto my scarf, As well as needing to make needle felted jewelry and print my scarfs to sell, So you will probably understand how stressful it is right now but hopefully it will all be worth it. So far I have sewn the angelina fibers underneath the needle feltings, But I shall also have random needle feltings scattered everywhere. Here are a few pictures of my progress.

That's been pretty much it for today guy's, hand sewing takes a lot of time and I've not had much time to do anything else today. I hope you all are enjoying the progress I am making.

Thankyou for reading x

A Day In The Life #6

Today's productive day was spent in my bedroom surrounded by lot's of wool, plenty of packets of angelina fibres and enough jewelry making rings for ten dozen finger's. That's right, I spent my day making needle felted rings!! I've been trying to perfect these rings for a while, I wanted to make them look wearable but still really cool and colourful to fit in with my project, Today I got it right and I am really excited to share it all with you guys.

Gathering little amounts of different coloured wool, I felted them together to make a circle or an oval shape and using invisible string, a bit like fishing wire, I sowed the ring to the felt making sure it was really safe and secure. I then felted more wool onto the ring to cover the string and then covered with angelina fibers.

7

I really love how these rings have turned out and I am going to make as many as I can for my exhibition. I got really excited using angelina fibers and decided to use interfacing to create pages of angelina fibers to sew onto my big exhibition scarf. These look amazing, basically what you do is put down some paper and then some interfacing over it, layer up your angelina fibers and then put some paper over the top of it then iron the paper, when you lift the paper up the fibers have all stuck together and gone hard like a page and it looks amazing, I got a bit excited doing this and produced lot's of outcomes...

Today was a really productive day and I am really grateful that I can do these things at home as it really saves me time. Tomorrow I shall be using the heat press at college to add my holographic heat transfers to my big scarf. I hoped you liked this blog post, lot's of shiny things to keep you entertained! See you all tomorrow for #7 of my day in the life series. 

Thank you for reading x

Sneak Peek Of One Of My Silk Scarfs!!

Here's a quick sneak peek of one of my scarfs I shall be selling at my exhibition at Barnsley College from the 23rd June - 27th June. Every scarf to be sold will be different colours and will range from silk to muslin. I hope you all like it and you can manage to come look at all the hard work I have done!!

The Science Of Textiles - Final Design Sheets

These are my final design sheet's. The purpose of these sheets are to show or explain what I want to create for my final piece/s. For one of these sheets I wanted to screen print on to it but with me having big screens and little time I thought it would be a better idea to photocopy some of my samples to show my design instead. The first picture (Top) shows that I am planing on making scarfs for my final piece. To do this sheet I used berol and water and collaged a photocopy of my sample to make it look like a scarf. I also used holographic heat transfer to add detail in the sunglasses and earrings. The second final design sheet (Bottom) is more informative including measurements for my big exhibition scarf, a swatch of fabric which I will be using and the sample I photocopied and featured on this sheet is the sample I am re creating for my big final piece. If you have been following my journey through my final major project on this blog then you will know that I am also creating a few smaller silk scarfs which I shall hopefully sell. I have not talked about them on my final design sheet as my main focus is my big scarf I am creating. 

As I plan on using tactile techniques on my exhibition scarf I have also shown them on my final design sheet. Dissolvable fabric to look like cells through a microscope and needle felted bacterial petri dishes which will have Angelina fibers on.

I hope you all enjoyed my journey through my final major project, My next post will be my evaluation. This is the end guys! All thats left to do is to produce my final piece before my exhibition in a months time. So watch out for more blog post's about that!
Thanks for reading x 

Print Room Fun!!

After spending my morning organising and adding to my unit 10 folder I then spent the afternoon doing some more printing sample's to add to my tech file experimenting with different colours and fabric's. Firstly I had a chat with the instructor Kathryn about my exhibition and my final piece's, My original plan was to have a big scarf as my main exhibition piece, This will be a scarf not to be worn but just for show. I would also have 3 little wearable scarfs all the same colours which I could sell. We now came up with a new plan which is to do the same but the main scarf bigger (the whole length of the printing table 4.5m x 1.5m) and to do many techniques on it such as sewing needle felting's onto it aswell as other techniques. I will also create as many other scarfs as I can using different colour's and materials so there are more choices for if people would like to buy them. On to printing...

Firstly I bought some fabric just at A4 size as it is just to experiment with colours to see how the colours and the fabrics react and see what colour pigments look good on top of procian dyes I've not yet used in this project.

After I bought my fabric which is a mix of habotai silk light, cotton and white muslin I then mixed some procian dyes in cups to use to make my backgrounds. In my previous printing room blog post you can see I use bigger tubs to put my diluted procian dyes in but this time I used smaller cups with the procian dyes still diluted. I also used a bigger tub and filled this with water to place my sample in before dying it as I like the bled and smudge affect it gives when adding the dye to a wet surface, This looks differently on different material.

I mixed some different colours to which I used for my last batch of samples as I wanted to experiment and see which would look good as I have planned to produce a few different scarfs in different colours using different fabrics. My technique to dye the backgrounds for these samples were to soak the sample in water and rinse it out then place on a piece of news print making sure it is flat. I then use 1 brush for each colour and choosing which every colour I want I splat the colour onto the fabric and then it bled and smudged, Doing this many times with different colours untill I got the effect I liked. I then put it on the drying rack to dry.

 I did not take many pictures of dyeing the backgrounds of my samples but you can see them clearly in the picture's I have took during my time printing on top of these samples.
After the samples had dried (all 8 of them), I did some yellow and orange based and some bright pink and blue based, I started to print on them. Now this is a two man job as my screens are so big so I had some help with this. 

Using different colours with my screens really got me excited to create my scarfs as there are so many different colours I could combine and I think I have added my style to this project really perfectly. Because of time management I did not take as many pictures as I could have as I was very busy in the print room as the final day to hand in all my work is Friday. I will not be handing in my final pieces as I have not started them yet but I have time before my exhibition to do these as they are not to be rushed. My plan is to get all my sampling out of the way in the next 2 days as everything I want to put on my final pieces have to be sampled so I shall be a very busy bee. 

I have found using bigger screens so much more easier and gave me an idea of what industry is really like, Although carrying and washing my screens has been hard and printing is a two man job it has been easier in the way that I can do many samples at once and for my final pieces it will not take me too long to print. 

Above are pictures of the pigments I used today to print with...

Reddy Pink - Scarlet pigment and Brill red.

Coral Pink - Scarlet Pigment and Orange

Lime - Yellow and Green Pigment

All these colours are really bright!!

Here are a few pictures of the final outcomes from the print room today...

I am so happy with the outcome's of todays print room fun! I am really happy with my project so far and I think I have shown my skills really well and I hope my exhibition reflects me well. I now need to do some more samples with different and unique things for my exhibition piece scarf as they have to be in on Friday.

I really hope you enjoyed reading about my time in the print room and I am so happy everything is coming along so well!!!

Thankyou for reading and if you have any questions or would like to request to buy a scarf that I shall be making then please get intouch!

Holographic Heat Transfer - The Science Of Textile's

A few days ago I got a delivery through the post and I got so excited!!... Its my holographic heat transfer paper, A full meter of it!! Yesterday was my day off college but I went in to use the heat press to do add some holographicness to my samples which I had already printed on which you can see in my previous post's. I started by getting my samples out and seeing how big the circular shapes were that I needed to cut out of my holographic transfer paper. I cut out the circles from my transfer paper, I had used a bottle lid to draw around to make a perfect circle. I next placed the sample on the heat press between the two A3 sized sheets which you place what ever your using on the heat press in between so it doesn't burn.

I then took the backing off the transfer paper and placed it on the sample in the correct place. Then placing the top sheet over the sample carefully not to move the sample or heat transfer paper or burn my self. I then correctly used the heat press. The heat press is set to around 180 degrees which is very hot so it is very important to be careful when using it. It is also set to a timer of 18 seconds which is the only amount of time you will need.

Once the 18 seconds was up I lifted the heat press up using the handle and carefully lifted the top sheet up to reveal my sample sandwiched between the two sheet's. I waited a couple of seconds for it to cool down then I took it out to see the results.

I am really happy with the outcome of my samples which I used the holographic heat transfer on. It really gives it the finishing touch. As I have one screen not exposed which is the background of the cells which will be light green, As the heat transfer paper fills in some of the background colour, I think if I also use the other light green screen you will not be able to see as much of the background and I don't want that to happen as I think the background really make's the scarf come to life. Therefore I do not think I shall be using my light green screen. 

In conclusion I am really happy with my samples and I can not wait to see it on a bigger scale!

I am going on holiday for the weekend tonight and will not be posting on my blog as I will not have been at college or at home to blog. 

I hope everyone enjoyed this blog post and loves the outcome of my samples as much as I do! 

Thankyou for reading!

The Science Of Textiles - POM POM'S!

I decided to create some pom pom's for my final major project, Using pastel coloured yarn to support my colour theme. Pom Pom's remind me of bacteria through a microscope as they are furry and circular. I did not know how to create pom poms untill I looked at some youtube tutorial's therefore I shall not explain how to do it as I'm not experienced enough, If you are eager to learn how to do it then check out any of these videos. 

As you can see I have used blue and purple colour's to create this pom pom but if I get time I shall experiment with colour's size and maybe add some angelina fibers. 

I hope you all liked this short and sweet blog post.

Thank you for reading! 

The Textiles Of Science - Pastel Weave!

As I've been doing a lot of needle felting for this final major project I decided I would mix things up a bit with my techniques so I have decided to focus on some weaving too, I have created a weave using the peg loom using pastel colours to match my colour scheme on my development sheet and background sample's. I really enjoy doing weaves and really love the colour's I have used. Here are a couple of pictures of the weave I have created so far...

I usually just do my weaves using the peg loom using a 40cm length yarn for the weave and keeping it that size however this time I doubled that size and really preferred the outcome, I shall experiment with the lengths of the weave and the tightness next time to see the outcome I like best, although the sample's of weave's will not be to produce a final outcome but to find out what I like the weave's I produce to look like although if I like my samples enough I shall put these on show in my exhibition as they connect really well with my theme.

I hope you like my blog post. Thankyou for reading. 

  

The Science Of Textiles - Sampling Backgrounds In The Print Room

Today I was in the print room doing small A5 sized samples for backgrounds, Using different fabrics and diluted procian dye's to create a weak colourful effect. The fabric's I used was Habotai heavy silk, Habotai light silk, Muslin and cotton. These are all fabrics I would consider using for my end products which will be scarfs made for the summer month's. 
I first started by buying some A4 sized fabric...

I then started experimenting with colour, Just using dilute colour's all the colour's which are diluted here are 3 150ml cups filled with water and poured into the tubs which are supplied at college then using 5 to 8 table spoons of procian dye to make the colour which I will be using. 

After experimenting for a while which backgrounds I came out with these samples, Normally I would talk to you through how I did each sample but with them just being background samples its pretty straight forward. I just had all my colour's infront of me this included, a peachy orange, blue, green (which dried more like blue), purple and pink. I then just put my fabrics in the colour's I wanted and left them for 1 minute to dye and then squeezed out the excess water/dye. After a while I liked the colours I was using and started to double up the colours using one colour for half of my fabric and another colour for the other half. My favourite one at this point was using purple and pinky orange half and half.

The colour's I used.

I wanted to try and do some more tactile things with my samples, although they are just background samples I shall be using more tactile and many techniques for my main scarf I will be producing and this will be my main exhibition piece. The other two scarfs I will be producing will be just flat normal scarfs which will be available to buy. I decided to use batik on two of the samples I disliked the most after the wax had dried I ironed it off with an iron with paper over the top so it doe's not get wax on the iron. This really did not work as the samples I did it on where both silk and I think silk is too light of a fabric for batik as it just left an oily consistency on my sample's. 

The batik pot which I used to do my batik.

After all this experimenting I bought some more fabric, just silk and cotton and decided to do something a little differently to what I had been doing before. This was splatting the dye onto a sample which has just been soaked in a dye for 2 seconds max (this is so the dye doesnt dye it but just wets the sample so the dye which I splat onto it bleeds and makes a nice effect) I really enjoyed doing this and I really enjoy the outcome.. Here are a few pictures.

I am really excited about these samples, the colours are amazing and it makes me happy that I chose this colour scheme and topic for my fmp. I can not wait to finally get to print when my screens are exposed. 

I hope everyone likes them, If you have any feedback please comment.

Thankyou for reading! 

Business Card - Corporate and Creative.

During my time studying Textiles with Surface Design I have also being doing different unit's and one big part of my studies is the unit 10 which is professional practise, In this unit we keep a folder and use it to store paperwork to support the grading criteria and the contents which unit 10 holds. This include's uni course research, UCAS application and feedback, University Feedback, Grading, Peer assessments, Tutor feedback and paper work such as that as I am now nearing the end of my textiles course at Barnsley college I am now onto the final major project section of my professional practise folder, This is where I have looked into business card's so far, I have researched into both corporate business cards and creative business cards as I will be creating both. I have also annotated all the business card's I researched into so I could refer back and see what to avoid and what I'd like to include in my business card/s.

After looking into business cards and getting some inspiration the next thing for me to do was to look into some fonts and annotate them including what I like and dislike about them and why.

Now was the time to start creating some designs for my corporate and creative business card's, I did 2 A4 sized plain paper full of designs for my corporate designs here are the pictures...

 

The above are my first quick designs for my business card's, After looking at a few samples of previous student's business card's I decided to take some pictures of my favourite ones...

I liked the professional look on this business card and also its simplicity. 

The rounded corners really appealed to me on this one also the professional look and finish of it.

The acetate idea really gave me a good idea for my creative business card.

After looking at some sample business cards I had a better idea of what I would like to do and I decided I would like to send off my design for my corporate business card to a company such as vistaprint or something similar as my business card would look more professional but for my creative business card I would like to use acetate and create a cell shaped card, I shall have to sample this though and see if it would work. 

If anyone has any idea's on business cards which would help me as my business cards need to relate to my fmp work which is based on science, any feedback or help would be much appreciated.  

Thankyou for reading.. Becca x