fabric

fabric work

pattern types

often when a traditional craft becomes mechanised the art form is lost, however in the case of sewing the development of newer machines have allowed for a variety of decorative and functional stich patterns,  of which are most often used as a boarder because of the repetitive nature of the stich, my personal favourite of these would be the crescent stich, however this does take the longest and causes the machine to shake a lot.

slashing and folding

within the fashion industry two popular processes are slashing on folding, slashing is based on layering fabrics and cutting the surface and intermediate layers, followed by fraying the ends, this is especially effective when used with selective colour pallets, for example green and gold work well, this process works well on areas of motion such as elbow sections on sleeves . folding is a another method that involves pinching the fabric to create a crease, this allows shaping and decoration.

despite these being effective methods, because I plan to use a sheet for my outcome this process may not be effective and may be lost in my intentions, as my focus is on family bonds through the use of colour and slashning often involves layering and a lot of the colour. I hope to keep my final to be both striking and as simple as possible, a task I do not believe possible with slashing and folding. 

spray paint

as many of my previous pieces feature spray-paint it felt appropriate to use this medium within this project, my aim with this is that stencils can be used to create shapes and form. using this method I have found that using spray paint stiffens the fabric and if too much spray paint is applied then it may bleed into the fabric. considering these drawbacks I need to fine a method that allows finer detail.

hippocampus

using a scrap pair of jeans I spray-painted my hippocampus stencil onto them, as denim is a thicker material, bleeding shouldn’t be as much of an issue, in addition to this, the material shouldn’t become as inflexible, this makes denim a very useful material in this sense however the final outcome is required to be a white sheet or shirt.

circles, skull, spider

for this I wanted to test how spray paint would react with darker and thinner fabric

dragon

since thinner fabric bled a lot I wanted to try using a thicker fabric in hope of finding the compensation point between the absorption and amount of bleeding, for this I used cotton since this material is known for being very absorbent. 

with thread

because spray paint is not as effective on thinner fabric I decided to use thread to define the details, to test this method I have used the dragon stencil as this is one of the more complicated stencils and if what I wanted to achieve could not with this piece then it would not with any of the others. after completing this I found that this process works, allowing the shapes created to have from, in addition to this tone can also be created when using similar colours to the fabric.

1
life drawing 

during two life drawing sessions I have used fine liner pen to draw the models as they posed, the image consisting of a lager range of colour was drawn over the space of 15 minutes, this allowed me to spend more time to consider compositional aspects and add more freehand elements while still maintaining human form, this piece represents a link between man and machine how often people can be treated like machinery or simple parts.

the second piece I had only five minutes to complete and personally I prefer this significantly less to the other one. another difference is that I used ballpoint pen rather than fine liner this created a much bolder line however the colours did run a little more than with the other, In addition to this I do not believe that this method matches my sketchy style of drawing as well as using fine liner. as there was less time to draw this did not focus as much on creating a representation that isn’t simple a visual of what I saw in front of me.

monoprinting

monoprinting on fabric

tie dying

linen

1 twine

2 bands

3 button
this was the most successful of the tie dyeas 

fur
I had brought several small sections and one of those was short white, faux fur, 

shirt
the most successful pieces using tie dye this shirt was made by bundling the fabric tightly and dipping one half in yellow and the other in blue, this larger scale process turned out a lot better then the smaller scale.

teddy
not wanted to limit myself to sheets of material I have decided to try dying a teddy bear, this allows to test how the dye reacts to objects containing stuffing. for this I submerged the bear in blue dye and then dripped on concentrated areas of yellow once the previous colour had dried. however I found that the dye does not distribute evenly throughout the object leaving many areas of it the original colour, this is as result is not an effective practice.

drawing with thread

the artist harriet popham uses drawing

painting on fabric

colour is what will be most prominent it is worth considering fabric paint as an option, therefore I have done a few experiments using this medium.

as watercolours

because fabric is very absorbent adding water to the paint can make  a huge difference resulting in the colour to become far more even and run a lot more depending on how much water is added. this would allow for a better distribution of colour that can be layered create more a layered effect. this method is not as efficient for creating finer lines, in addition to this the colours are significantly muted compared to the labelled  colour.

dry brush

without using water the colours are far more vibrant than when using water, however significantly more paint is required as it runs out quicker.

fur

soaking

pelt

marbling on fabric

using the process previously described I have used marbling on fabric in which I have used a circular bowl to create circular patterns on fabric, the image created is similar to those on paper, however the  main problem with this method is that the paint does not stick to the fabric and peels off, which is a serious drawback. due to the issues with this method, I do not think it would be appropriate to consider this for an outcome.