The curator at the Devon Guild has done a wonderful job in displaying my pieces within the gallery space, complimenting the work of the other designer makers around me.
For ‘Get Fresh’ I wanted to show these two contrasting collections to reflect the diversity of my designs. Most of my patterns can be woven large or small in scale and be transferable from a rug design to a light soft furnishing fabric.
Although aesthetically quite different, both are designed through extensive sampling on the loom, then woven by hand, in British Wool from breeds not used widely (due to colour or properties of the wool or because they are designated as rare). I avoid using petrochemical dyes by extracting colour from nature or just using ‘non-white’ wool in browns, shades of grey and black.
The subtle patterning is created using just two alternating tones of grey in both warp and weft; simply put, where a pale weft weaves over a dark warp, a horizontal pale line results and a pale weft weaving under a dark warp results in a vertical pale line.
The cushions bear the names of places in Cumbria; the hardy Herdwick breed of sheep are native to it’s fells. I stayed in Newton Rigg on an Agricultural student exchange on my first visit to the Lake District many years ago.
rebecca connolly design 