Constructed Interior

I found this image in a magazine from my Uni library. It appeals to me for many different reasons. I love the layering up of the room. Particularly the hanging lights with the different light shades and levels at which they hang. That in itself makes quite a beautiful piece of constructed textiles and could be nice to make drawings of in terms of line, shadow and light. There is also the layering up of different textures within the background, ceiling and flooring. I quite like the constructed piece on the wall to the right of the lampshades with it's interesting, almost lace like pattern. The chairs also bring in the circular element of the wall piece adding another exciting constructed aspect to the interior.

Marie Claire Mason magazine, Issue 450, December 2011-Janvier 2012

Abigail Brown's Butterfly Brooches

I found the image of these cute butterfly brooches in the Embroidery magazine of March/April 2010. I think they're gorgeous. I think that they have been constructed with bits and scraps of fabric and have also been embroidered and stitched.

Looking on Abigail's website, I found out a little more about what she does. 
She works with fabric 'using it to give life to the little creatures that form in her mind'.
The fabrics she uses can be new or old as she loves the vibrancy of new fabrics and their bright colours but also the fact that the history of an old fabric can live on in the form of something new.
Abigail's work is mostly textile created animals as they inspire and interest her.

First image: Embroidery magazine, March/April 2010
Text and second image: www.abigail-brown.co.uk

An Interesting Construction

I found this image whilst looking for images of construction and found it quite interesting.

It's the idea of constructing something and then putting it into a natural environment. I'm not sure what the chair is made from but the strong, bold colours against the natural background is quite an interesting play. I also love the fact that the chair has been suspended within the environment  it's somewhere you wouldn't expect it to be. I like the fact that the idea has been played with. Rather than just a chair, there are constructed elements that come down and touch the ground, blending the object in and in some ways linking it to its surroundings.

Image reference: Bloom Magazine, Issue 21.

Gwen Hedley.

Gwen Hedley is very much a embroidery and stitch based artist. She has a book out called 'Drawn to Stitch' which I found very interesting to look through. Gwen is also part of the Embroiders Guild and Textile Study group.

Her working materials:
- Old natural fibred fabrics (cotton, linen, wool)
  She likes to use second hand fabrics which have a history. They feel warn or can be patched
  or darned. Most of her fabrics are found in Charity Shops.
- Cotton machine thread and stranded cottons
  She likes to create her own colour palette, blending different coloured threads to create her
  own subtle colours. The threads she uses can also vary in thickness to create a different feel
  and weight to her work.
About Gwen's work:
Her older work was a lot more machine stitched and she would use the sewing machine needle as her drawing tool. In recent days, Gwen has begun hand stitching and couching in order to make the strong marks from her drawings.

I love the quality of Gwen's work and the textural feel it gives with the layers that she builds up. I think her work becomes very interesting and in her book I found the transitions from her drawings to textiles and how she translated drawings very interesting.

Text reference:
www.gwen-hedley.co.uk
Image references:
http://embroidery.embroiderersguild.com/2001-1/hedley.htm
Hedley, G. (2010) Drawn to stitch : line, drawing and mark-making in textile art. London: Batsford.

Karen Nicol's Lecture

Last Thursday (24th Feb) I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture from Karen Nicol all about her work and what she does. I found the lecture incredibly interesting and got a great insight to how she works. 

She use to do a lot of bespoke work in fashion working behind the scenes for big names by embellishing their garments. She now works a lot more in interiors, displaying work in perspex boxes. The interior side of the industry is a lot slower than the fashion side which she likes and she  finds that you can push boundaries a lot more and push forward the 3D elements of textiles.

With fashion, Karen spoke about how a designer would come to her 6/4 weeks before a show with a brief and ideas of how they wanted their garment to look. She'd then go away and spend two days solid producing lots of samples adhering to the designers character. Karen and the designer would then meet up again and discuss what
worked and what didn't. She'd then be given a garment to
embellish before the deadline of the show.

I found it quite interesting that Karen gets a lot of inspiration from car boot sales. She collects and buys things that visually appeal to her. She hangs these things around her studio aswell as using the objects within her work. Looking back over her work, Karen has found strong links between what has been hanging around her studio and her textiles which she hadn't realised had happened.

Karen said her favourite part of the whole process is getting the idea and making it work. She advised not to
be precious with it, saying "The more rules you can
 break, the better"

These are just a handful of things I found out from the lecture, I found it incredibly inspiring and it gave me a lot of insight into the industry, both with fashion and interiors.

Along the right hand side are just a few photographs of work that Karen Nicol brought in for us to have a look at.