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Linton Tweeds Ltd

Day 4- Thursday

When I had got to work that morning I found out the lady I had been shadowing had taken the day off. This resulted in David and myself working on the CCI loom all day. It was actually a great opportunity to have a go myself with using this loom. Although Huddersfield has one of these looms, I did not have a chance of using it during my time in second year. 

David took me through the simple steps of how you make the machine start- allowing the gripper to move to bring the yarn from the left side of the machine to the right. Then the gripper returned to its resting place and the reed came forwards pushing the shot tightly and securely to the rest of the sample.

Other things I learnt on the loom was how when the loom did not pick up a yarn and therefore skipped over it, then you are able to go back a shot to recollect the yarn. The same would work for the opposite way- going forward a shot.

During the day, I learnt about the importance of tension on industrial looms that on arm looms have not significance. If the tension is not as the machine would like, then the gripper will be unable to bring the yarn back through. 

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Linton Tweeds Ltd

Day Two- Tuesday

Today I met the designers and helped them in their preparation for Premier Vision. Each year the company get the chance to create a window display that promotes Linton Tweeds- in particular their usual and unique yarn. One of the designers showed me images of previous window displays for the Premier Vision. I found it really interesting and fascinating that they were using this yarn in a completely contradictory and unconventional way. One display they had done was have paint brushes hanging throughout the window with different fancy yarns as the brush hairs coming out of each one.

Also whilst I was in the Design room I was able to add new fabrics to their archives. I found this really exciting as it allowed me to see some of the previous designs they have done up to quite far into the past-towards the early years of the formation of the company. These designs included some for Chanel and other well known, top end labels. 

In the afternoon I was back in the factory where I continued to draw warps.However I found that they gradually became more complicated going from straight drafts to mixed. 

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Linton Tweeds Ltd

Day One- Monday

Met the staff in the areas I would be working in. David, the Health and Safety officer guided me through the factory showing me where things were. I also had to read through the risk assessment and health and safety procedures. 

One person in particular I met was a lady called Jess. She works on a CCI sample loom. This loom they bought in the last year and actually visited Huddersfield to see a very similar loom to see if they wanted one like it. One main difference between the two looms is that the one at Linton Tweeds is that it is ran on air pressure, not electricity. This is a less expensive loom. 

I continued the day working on drawing the warp that would then go on the CCI loom. The first draft I worked on was a straight draft which I was pleased about as I hadn't done any drawing for quite a few months. 

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James Hare Ltd

Monday 12th June | Thursday 15th June

During my time at James Hare, i focused on their archive in Leeds. They had boxes and boxes of fabric samples that they have designed, created and sold in the past, however they were unable to easily access these. Therefore my job was to organise the fabrics into different categories. These include :

Jacquard

Embroidery

HIMATSINKA

Velvet (decorative)

Velvet (plain)

Digital print

Plain

Stripes

Embroidery/print

To begin with I found it difficult to distinguish between some embroidery fabrics and jacquard becuase some of the techniques were very similar, however as the days rolled in and I handled more and more of them- I found that by looking either at the back of the fabric or the front to see if the yarns are embedded/ worked into the fabric or sitting on top.

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Making a Statement

For this task in Designer Maker, we had to look at one of the articles/ subject matters that we have included in our research journals. The purpose of this was to publicise and connect with the viewer or passer by over the subject that was close to my heart. 

For this particular piece I chose to base mine on the issue of littering. This is because a particular news article by the BBC, caught my eye invoking how a baby polar bear in rural Russia got a metal tin can stuck on its tongue. Experts believe that it was stuck there for around two weeks, however the bear made a full recovery. 

For me personally I felt really connected to this subject matter because it is such a global and increasing issue and therefore I felt that this was a extremely important reason why I should focus on this. Exploring this area I began to find that people who often live in urban places and have very busy lives can often get wrapped up in a bible of their own little world, and therefore when they litter and drop something then they do not realise the full and detrimental impact of these actions. 

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Second Weave Project: Double Cloth

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Choosing Colour Pallet for Weave Project on Double Cloth

At the moment i plan on creating pleats on my double warp, as feel that this will be able to express the textures, layers and colour of the landscape which I want my weaves to be influenced and inspired by. 

From my summer journal I have been taken by the soft flowing colours of the landscape. I particularly feel that the Scottish landscape is so much more special in my world. Which I feel that is partly influenced from all my summers that have spent up there. I plan to pick out a few of these colours in the photograph and design my warp greatly influenced by it. I think that because it is the Scottish landscape that I am really focusing on, I would really like to continue working with the woollen yarn. I believe that the colours are a lot more natural than most of the other choices, in particular the synthetic and man-made yarn types. I realise that using these wooden yarns are not the easiest ones to work with as they are a single twist yarn which I know from the previous projects they are quite easy to break and then can be very temperamental however I really feel that the results will be worth it.

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Mark Making- Drawing

I absolutely loved this workshop as I felt like it really made me think way outside the box- especially since I had never really thought much about how I could experiment with different types of printing that could still influence my weaves. 

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Painting in Guache

We had looked at and explored using Gauche paints in the first year, and therefore i decided to try and develop the technique one step further than I have done in the past. This was that I blend different areas of the paint. I wasn’t really sure how the paint would respond doing this, and one difficulty I encountered was that as it is very watery which meant that I really struggled in trying to get the paint to create a soft blend but instead it turned more into a bleed effect. Although this happened I really love the results that it has produced - creating more depth within the painting than you would typically get with a usual gauche painting. 

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Weave First Project

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Fabric Specification

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First Weave Project 

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What I find really interesting about this piece by Dault is that it is not the traditional looking piece, but that it actually plays tricks on the eyes, as for me personally i thought that it was a weave due to the fact of how the artist has arranged the pattern and texture of the cloth - definitely creating movement within the piece.

Julia Dault 

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I think that this is very much a simple piece, however the execution and the results to me are so very dramatic. I feel that it is definitely and reminder of the fact that we do not need to go complex and intricate to always get the best results.

Richard Tuttle

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This piece has really made me think about how I could manipulate the surface of the paper, using ether oil, enamel or something else. Then we could really work on top and manipulate and exaggerate the textures and lines that have originally been created.

Willem de Kooning

 Valentine, 1947

 Oil and enamel and paper on board

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I would really like to create something like this in my visual research. I definitely feel that this is something my work is moving toward this year - looking more in depth at mark making and the unusual ways that this can be created. 

Mayako Nakamura