M3 - Evaluation of Functional 3D Embroidered Item

The completed embroidered assessment piece for Module 3 is a pair of shoes based on the design topic of spirals.

How do you feel about the resulting conclusion?

Overall I am pleased with the final pair of shoes. Having never made shoes before, and not realising quite how fiddly they can be to hand craft, I have ended up with a matching pair. The shoes are quite fun and the colours are bright and strong. I used fabrics I had already dyed and buttons etc. that I had made for samples and it has been good to use things I have already made.

I have found this module the most difficult so far; I didn't feel I really connected with the design topic and it has taken a long time for me to work through, mainly due to procrastinating rather than a physical time issue. This may also be because I am reaching the half way point of the course. By the time I got to the assessment piece I felt I was struggling a bit and needed to loosen up. Encouragement from Sian gratefully received. I was also not keen on my initial colour choices. But I finally tried to view it as if I had a deadline and brief and got on with it!

Is it fit for purpose - give reasons?

The shoes are fit for purpose because they fit and are a pair, and seem to have held together well. It might be quite hard to find an outfit to match the shoes but I'm sure they would go with a summer dress etc.

If you were asked to make it again, what changes would you make to the way you designed it and the way you made it?

Firstly I would stitch each component part on a larger piece of fabric to give some more play on size and movement. The pelmet Vilene was probably not the best choice for stiffening the heel sections, although it does work. The DMC memory thread spirals have not held as tightly as I would have liked and it was very expensive to use, coloured or covered wire would be better. Regarding the design component I could have gone much bigger on the Hunderwasser inspired decoration for the tops of the fronts and cut and changed more from my original design.

[Cost and timings etc. listed on top tabs]

M3 - Chapter 12 Research Three Artists

Zandra Rhodes (1940 - Present)
Fashion Designer

Zandra Rhodes is a British but internationally known fashion designer who was born in Kent, instantly recognisable with her bright pink hair.  Her designs are theatrical and extrovert. In fact, her first designs were so outrageous for British manufacturers, she pioneered the use of her own printed textiles. Her original printed textiles form the basis of her work. Her Textile Design Bible includes all her designs for printing. I particularly like her references to nature, her travels and mark making designs. What I found interesting is that she uses these print designs several times and often comes back to them in different collections. She keeps all her printing screens and it would be fairly easy to keep a record of marks and designs I have used for mono printing. I am particularly enjoying the printing components of the course and like the idea of building my own 'bible' of marks.

 

 

She incorporates embroidery and beading, and pays particular attention to hems, including hand rolled for chiffons and baby overlocked for jersey. The attention to detail makes her designs stand out amongst others. The finish of her pieces makes them especially beautiful.

She is not only known for her fashion and printed textiles, but also for her accessories, including shoes, jewellery and handbags. Zandra has been commissioned to design costumes and sets for operas and spent much time setting up the Fashion & Textile Museum in London.

 

 

Fortunately as Zandra believes strongly in digitising her work it is available to browse and study online and it is very easy to lose yourself in her work - http://vads.ac.uk/collections/ZR.php

There are some very interesting tutorials with Zandra available online for free - http://www.zandrarhodes.ucreative.ac.uk/p/tutorials.html It's fairly unusual for an artist/designer to be so willing to share all of their work in this way.

 

Deirdre Hawken (1945 – Present)

Hat Maker

Deirdre Hawken was born in Reading and is an internationally recognised designer and maker of headpieces. She trained in theatre design at Central/St Martins and is also described as a mixed media artist often inspired by food related subjects.

 

 

Her art hats are instantly recognisable and I always think they look as though they have just been picked from the garden, and are always fresh and bright. The berries on patisserie head piece look as though you could pick them off and eat them.  The thing that strikes me most about Deirdre’s work is the attention to detail, similar to the work of Zandra Rhodes. Also, the pieces are very humorous but remain beautiful pieces of work.  She often works with dyed silk organza and taffeta, and mainly uses hand stitch and traditional millinery techniques.  I like the way in which she crumples organza to achieve leaf effects and the lovely tonal changes achieved with hand dying.

 

 

Deirdre also works with fashion head pieces and I particularly like the work that incorporates feathers. These still have a very natural and organic feel to them, although on close observation I feel that each feather is carefully planned and placed.

 

 

The other interesting thing I found out was that Deirdre won a QEST (Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust) scholarship in 1999 when she was 54 years old, showing that age is not a barrier to art!

 

 

Sonia Delaunay (1885 – 1979)

Artist

 

I visited the Sonia Delaunay Exhibition at Tate Modern last year and found it exciting to see an artists’ work from their very early pieces through to some of the last work produced. She is described as a ‘key member of the Parisian avant-garde’ and the ‘European doyenne of abstract art’. Her work spanned many areas and similar to Zandra Rhodes she worked with textiles, accessories and set designs; and poets and magazines. I particularly attended the exhibition to view her textile work but found that I became far more involved in looking at her other art work.

Most of her work involved strong geometric shapes and colour, including circles, rings and spirals. One of my favourite pieces was Le Bal Bullier (1913) an abstract painting of dancers which gives the impression of the dancers twirling around – spiralling – you can almost feel the movement and hear the music.

 

Of her textiles I mostly liked the printed spiral fabrics and found her use of colour inspiring, one pattern but many variations. As Sonia’s sketchbooks and other colour studies were on show it was easy to see how her thoughts and processes of design were worked out. The following images are a design for Metz & Co (1934) for silk, some of which was used to make shawls.

 

 

 

There were several accessories available to view and I was drawn to the beautifully embroidered shoes; court shoes made in c.1926. They had a strong geometric ‘1920s’ design and the colours were still surprisingly deep in tone.

 

Unusually Sonia swopped between using textiles to inspire paintings and paintings to inspire textile design:

"About 1911 I had the idea of making for my son, who had just been born, a blanket composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Ukrainian peasants. When it was finished, the arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke cubist conceptions and we then tried to apply the same process to other objects and paintings."

Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay was an unusual artist in that not only was she accepted as a female artist of some repute for her era but she was also accepted as both an abstract painter and a textile artist at that time.

M3 Chapter 11 - Composite Sheet with Completed Accessory

 

And they fit!

M3 Chapter 9 - A Resolved Sample Revisited & Framed

After some discussion and suggestions from Sian I decided to take the last sample layer back, so I removed all of the buttons and spirals. It was all too 'busy'. Then I added some spiral back.

 

 

I pinned them in place first to check I was happy with the design. For the framing my husband made a wooden frame and I added some mount board to one side before using strings to hold the work in place. This was quite tricky because of the 3D part of the work. Eventually the frame could have been just slightly smaller or I could have had a wider background to wrap around the sides. This did work quite well though and I will use this method again.

 

 

 

 



The final work:

Reflecting on this sample I'm pleased with the final work and glad I took time to re-work the final layer. I could have made a second sample which I would probably do if I were working on a larger piece of work or a series of works.