Chapter 13 - Artist studies.
Hans Holbein the elder and younger. Holbein painted embroidery on his sitters' garments in minute detail
study these and find out about the Holbein stitch, a common blackwork stitch.
Bridget Riley. Find out about Bridget Rileys' 1960's OP-ART paintings done in mainly black and white and how she gave the illusion of a 2D image appearing 3D.
Artist of my own choice. - Colleen Atwood.
The artist I chose to look at for my third artist study is a costume designer called Colleen Atwood.
I looked at some theatrical costume designers when I first started to think about making a collar for my final piece and I felt drawn to Colleen Atwood because of her bird inspired costumes.
Chapter 12 - The final design and design pages for my three dimensional functional item.
Here are my design pages for my collar, I was already thinking about making something quite dramatic as I looked at feather collar displays on birds, Elizabethan collars and tribal collars and what they might represent. I started to play around with layers and what I might have on each layer. I tried putting various sample layers together to see how they looked and to make decisions about what I wanted to put together.
I started to think about having a layer that appeared to be taking off and experimented with putting wire inside cords so I could bend and shape parts of the cord to appear raised.
I cut some discs out of paper to try out sizes for the collar.
The Final Piece - My bird inspired Collar.
Chapter 11 - Further design exercises leading to fabric samples.
Design exercises looking at a number of different ways in which you can arrange different paper strips together and cut up and rearrange into different patterns.
Stitched fabric samples based on your ideas.
Make a series of samples to translate any of these more complex designs created earlier in this chapter.
You Must incorporate these ideas within your samples.
Add stitching to your fabrics before the cutting and seaming stages. Stitch lines in different directions and not always parallel to each other.
Use your decorated fabrics with the emphasis on the use of stitchery, both on plain fabrics as well as your own decorated fabrics.
Where there is a single line of machine stitching, add at least 4,5,6 or 7 more on top of and along side. These could be exactly the same as the existing one or they could be variations.
Place as many of the seams as possible towards the front.
Make a dominant decorative feature of at least one of the final forward-facing seams.
Above is sample A turned over so you can see the other side.
Chapter 10 - Piecing - A method of cutting and seaming.
This designing method is based on the traditional Seminole patchwork method. It is done first in paper and then in fabric. You start with one black and one white strip and keep cutting, rearranging and re-piecing. To make new and exciting patterns. Or in the case of fabric more exciting texture.
