Tutorial With Nick

On Tuesday I had a tutorial with Nick. I took all of my printed scarf designs along with me to show him my designs and discuss edging them. He particularly liked my design on wool, he said he thought the colour and design worked better on the fabric. I can see what he meant as the silk tends to absorb the dye to a point where the design starts to look a little pixilated. however I do love the quality of the silk it really shows the colour off beautifully with a lovely shine.

Nick also gave me some other ideas for my work :

• Show my designs in more fashion contexts e.g. skirts, tops, trousers etc.
• Continue to develop geometric mark made designs.
• Velvet scarf ideas: Print dots as an edge design and then re- dye a different colour. In the centre of the scarf use devore and discharge printing using the light pink dye with the discharge paste. Nick thought this colour was more interesting than normal discharge. 
• Experiment with of printing dots creating a layered effect. Maybe develop this idea on my black and white scarf design. 
• Fray the edge of my wool scarf including the natural wool colour with the planned orange edge.
• When I hand designs in show them as collections e.g: black and white etc.

New Screen Designs

Over the bank holiday weekend I decided to create some new screen designs. I wanted to create 3 new designs developing them for my silk satin final samples. I used my large A1 drawings from which I created the digital designs from. I used the A1 drawings to following the original motifs I created. 

I am going to use the thistle design to create my velvet scarf. I also created a blocked out thistle design my plan is to discharge the design above and devore the block thistle design out of the velvet. 

Hand Painting Devore

Over the weekend I spent my time hand painting devore onto 2 of my final scarf designs. This was a very lengthy process with one design taking me 4 hours to paint the devore on. I had to take this approach as screen printing the devore would have been a near impossible task, lining the screen up wold have been very difficult and just woudn't have worked.

This was quite a risky thing to do, as the devore paste tend to spread on its own. On tuesday I used the heat press in the print room to burn the paste off. As I said this was a temperamental process and I sadly got paste on sections I hadn't intended. Im unsure how to resolve this at the moment and is something I need to think about. Im not going to lie I was very upset about this, but I am just going to have to make it work.

Printing My Black & White Geometric Scarf

On Wednesday I had booked to use the print room from 9.15am till 3.30pm, my plan for the day was to print the background layers of my geometric scarf using my existing screens along with the paper stencils I had cut the day before. As well as this I also wanted to Dye a metre of velvet I bought in preparation for an another scarf design. 

I knew that this was a lot of work to do in the time But I was hopeful I could achieve it. For inspiration I took my small b & w samples which I printed before the easter holidays.

I began In the same way I did with the samples above by printing dots for the background, I used 2 of my old screens to do this with contrast dots of 2 sizes with one hand painted dot design and the other a computer created dot design. I then printed my collaged geometric paper stencils on top. I had to do this in sections as all of the larger screens had design upon them already and I needed an open screen. 

I managed to finish the printing of the patterns on the scarf I had to do in 8 layers which is why it took all day! I did have a slight hiccup with the dye the dots I printed first i used a black/blue ink by accident I rectified this for the top layer of the paper collage. Although this was not planned the effect created is very interesting. I also managed to dye my velvet black as planned so overall the day was very successful. 

I plan to nest work back into this design using devore with further paper stencils and screens, I am hopeful this will create an interesting look. 

I have decided to print both the hand scarves and then see if I feel they fit in with the others if they don't I will use them as large samples putting them into a fashion context using bias binding and have them in my portfolio. 

Creating Paper Stencils

After my group tutorial I came home to get on with creating paper stencils for my black and white geometric scarf which I wanted to start printing on wednesday. During my tutorial Nick expressed his interesting in the new geometric imagery I had been creating. I decided to continue this and develop motifs from the collages I created within my sketchbook for the Paper stencils.

This was a very time lengthy process with the stencils taking me 3 and half hours to draw and cut out. However I am excited about the idea of creating a collage using print, collage is my favourite drawing technique and I am looking forward to combining this with printing techniques.

Group Tutorial

On Tuesday morning we had a group tutorial with nick in which we discussed are plans and work for the degree show. I took this opportunity to show Nick my designs for my scarves by this point I had worked out the costing of the 9 scarves I had planned to print which was a shocking £500. Sadly because of this I have had to cut the number of scarves by 4 having only 5 printed instead of the original 9.

I showed Nick the revised designs and he seamed to approve of them. The only pointers he gave was in regard to my portfolio suggesting I show designs in different colour ways on a memory stick as well as presenting my samples in the collections which I have been creating which made a lot of sense.

Nick also suggested I consider creating some hand printed scarves along side my digital ones which I felt was a good idea and would enable me to show more of my skills.

I feel positive about the direction my work is going in I just need to keep focused for the next 3 weeks. This will hopefully enable me to achieve my goals for both my portfolio work and my degree show work. 

Finished scarf designs

Over the Easter holidays I worked hard to finish my 9 planned scarf designs. I found this to be a challenge, I wanted each design to be different from the next with a change of scale, motif or colour. I found that By setting myself this goal was a very effective way to push myself and enabled me to achieve my goal by the deadline I had set myself.
I am not going to lie this was a hard task I set myself and meant me spending 4 days straight on photoshop. I made a lot more than 9 designs in the end, but many I felt didn't work because of either colour, scale or motif.
Here are the 9 finished designs the square scarves are 100cm by 100cm and long scarves are 90cm by 200cm:

To be printed on Silk satin viscose with the inner green border devored away.

To be printed on silk satin viscose with the white squares devored away.

To be printed on silk satin

To be printed on wool delaine.

To be printed on silk satin viscose with the white dots devored away.

To be printed on wool delaine.

To be printed on silk satin

To be printed on silk satin.

To be printed on wool delaine. 

I am really pleased with these designs, I feel they work well as a collection and I am hopeful they will look eye catching at the degree show drawing viewers attention to my display.