“They’re all about control and separation: when you seek out elemental nature, make sure to shield yourself from the elements.” – Kate Fletcher
Kate Fletcher noted how when people venture to explore nature and create a closer bond with the growing natural world, they are often clothed in materials that are not natural, that shield people from the elements, that create a protective layer, a barrier from people and nature. It was an interesting observation which I began to explore more of within this concept. The idea of opening the body up to nature whilst creating a barrier at the same time. The juxtaposition of the PVC’s transparent and exposing nature compared to its durable and waterproof properties. I took inspiration from lichens shapes in order to mimic its form in stitch. I worked with Wilcome software to produce multihead samples testing different overlapping stitches and materials. As mentioned, before I chose to push my work with PVC. To develop not only the aesthetic of lichen I used elastic bobbin within the multihead machine to create a 3D sculptural affect too, as if it would be growing directly from the body.
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Being inspired from the Eyes as Big as Plates project mentioned in a previous post I decided to forage some different maple leaves. The leaves where left to dry over a few days, allowing the smaller variation to curl and distort. Very carefully they have been sewed down onto some previously ice dyed silk crepeline. I really like this sample for its auditorily property, as the material moves around there is a rustling that occurs, as if the wearer could have direct access to nature if the wore it. When ever the person needed a little piece of escapism they could put this on, shut there eyes and hear the sound of the forest around them.
After creating the passementerie weave with the yarn I had manipulated with pigmented puff binder, I decided to have a play around with the left over yarn. I made a pompom out of it, wrapping it around my hand, securing it with thread and then cutting the loops allowing the pompom to grow out. I loved it! It was like an otherworldly moss growth. It was hard to visualise how it could be used within my project with just one pompom available to me, so I decided to go back to the print room and start creating more of the puff yarn. imagining how it would be if the whole body was covered in it, wondering weather the moss growths would be attached to fabric or to one another, creating denser areas growing out of each other and how the colours would work, would there be a gradation, a drain of colour?
Pupi, 2012, Eyes as Big as Plates. Their project explores humans belongingness within nature, dressing participants in elements of nature that belong to their surroundings and then photographing them in situ.
I collected up as many of the magnolia bud scales as possible and began to sew them down. I decided to dye some off cut faux fur fabric I sourced a faded green colour and laser cut to create similar shapes. As the natural buds will eventually loose there lovely soft texture and turn darker, hard and crisp, giving another property to the wearable in the future, I thought integrating these fabric mimics would offer a start contrast as the wearable evolved. References:
Hjorth, K., 2017. Eyes as Big as Plates [online]. Available at: https://karolinehjorth.com/eyes-as-big-as-plates/ Fox, A., 2022. About [online]. Available at: https://www.alicefox.co.uk/about-the-artist/ Looking at the foliage around the fungi and lichens that I was interested in, I found I liked the way ivy would grow, how it would cover and claim walls, fences, gravestones. Ivy symbolised the power of nature to claim things, think about how this could represent an extreme symbiosis within my project. Started with quick sketches that I took into photoshop to develop and attempt to create the appearance of overgrowth. The colours are all wrong for the project but I did like how there was a depth with the mixture of more faded and visible ivy. I felt the best way to create this depthless with stitch was through use of colours and stitch fill types. After testers exploring layers going from light to dark and dark to light as well as cross stitch alterations and different satin stitch spacing, I ended up with this result. Personally, I love this piece, I love its chaos yet there are still visible glimpses of ivy shapes. With the organza background it also looks very lace like, like the plants are just hanging in air. It could be interesting to do a large scale development of an are in dissolvable or padloft. I think the mixture of cross stitch and then satin stitch really helped give it a more natural appearance exploring the different clarity of the plants, with the cross stitch giving it a more blurred appearance mimicking movement.
The delicate structure of the skeleton leaves instantly reminded me of lacework, so it felt right to be inspired by lace structures to develop a design. I used white thread of white organza to capture the delicateness, the unseen beauty of the decaying leaves. I sample looks best when draped with the fabric overlapping on itself showing more of a depth with the leaves as some become distorted. I used cross stitching to fill the larger sections of the leaves, these sections could be further developed creating a more abstract piece, maybe with increased scale or even being engraved into fabric.
Since I'd done some smaller testers of the elastic bobbin earlier, it was time to go big, to increase both the scale and the coverage of the material. I wanted to create the appearance of growth, to represent the symbiosis between humans and nature, to appearance that nature would be taking over the person that wears it. I used an iced dyed silk crepline as my base fabric and drew out a moss inspired design of curving lines. The end result was not as tight and compact as my testers though. Not too sure how this one will be rectified or developed further just yet, could possibly make separate elastic moss forms of different tightness to sew on top with other moss forms integrated within.
I was interested to see how the elastic would react to a much more tougher material. PVC fits more into my protect against nature project side so I was curious to see how a cross over of the environments could work. Of course PVC is very strong and not stretchy so at first I thought this could be a failure waiting to happen but I just had to find out what would happen.
I used the multihead embroidery machine with an elastic bobbin, with any stitches smaller that 1.5mm removed to avoid the PVC from tearing. At first when taken out of the frame, the material had not changed, it lay flat. However after a few minutes the material had began to move, it was contracting inwards and formed bumps and crevasses. Unlike the material from the post before hand who's shapes where very close and compact this material responded differently, it was more open but the rises where taller and the thread was looping out of the material giving it extra texture and more sculptural properties. Would be really interesting to create a multihead on the PVC which would be a mixture of flat embroidery and elastic embroidery creating a cross over of the two environments, almost like the beginning where humans realise we need more protection from nature but some nature is still present to take inspiration from to create wearables. |
AuthorJenny King Categories |