Woven Textile Designer, Handweaver
The opening of this Exhibition is on Friday 6th Sept 2019 from 5pm to 7pm, all welcome. As one of the weavers taking part, I will be there to show the new designs I developed, inspired by the textile archive held by Trowbridge Museum.
A film created by Benedict Mart, 2019 benedictmart.com.
Music by ‘Onceagain’ by bensound.com
I was approached by Cheltenham-based professional film-maker Benedict Mart who is undertaking a project to produce a series of films for Youtube depicting the creative practice of local artisans.
Filming took place at my studio over 2 days with a further day of editing the sound. Benedict kindly made a shortened version of his film for me to use for my own purposes.
Woven Textile Designer and Educator Laura Thomas has been running a Weaving Activity in the MakerShack at Cheltenham Science Festival and I’ve popped in a few times to lend another pair of weaving hands. The MakerShack has on average 1000 visitors each day, to have a go at a wide offering of both ‘techno’ and traditional making crafts. Children and Adults who had never woven before, were weaving their own mini masterpieces within minutes on little weaving frames.
Promotional images from Vanessa Arbuthnott on launching this addition to her collection in Spring 2019.
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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.
I started experimenting with extracting colour, primarily yellows and oranges, from Dahlias towards the end of their flowering season. With the first frost this locally sourced fresh raw material ended.
An alternative colour-way using dried natural dyestuffs was developed. An individual dyestuff rarely yielded the precise pinks of the Tibetan monks robes so I used two or more dye-baths to obtain better colour matching.
I experimented with natural dyestuffs that generally give reds/pinks/purples such as Madder Root, Brazilwood and Logwood, ‘modifying’ each dyebath to get what I wanted. By adjusting the acidity/alkalinity of the water, the maximum heat applied to extract the dye and other factors, I turned warm reds into cool reds, blue-purples to red-purples and these red-purples into cerise pink by grating chalk into a Brazilwood dyebath.
Colour was blended across the width of the warp, alternating one of cerise pink with smaller amounts of the other pink/purple tones. Both this warp and the yellow/orange warp was just 2m long; sufficient to weave just two of these unique rugs.
Loving the ceremonial head-wear of the Tibetan monks, I just had to incorporate a little of the Dahlia dyed yellow and orange into this pink/purple design.
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