Inspiration.

Walking through the workshops is always really inspirational. Whilst in first year, pupils are obliged to create straightforward pieces of cloth with simple weave structures and suitable yarns in the third year more freedom to experiment is allowed. And by the looks of their work this year, the results are truly incredible! It must be a release of all the pupils imaginative ideas that have been building up over the years. A girl called Claire has been working on a woven light structure. By using thick cord and wire covered in silk and weaving in occasional led lights she is creating long woven strips which will then be attached together to create a really unique and highly innovative alternative to the traditional bulb and shade!

Another weave which has caught my eye is this highly textured and vividly coloured cloth-




To help me to better understand its creation, I went back onto Loom Number 9 (the double cloth loom) to create a padded sample. Obviously my two warps were considerably different. For a start instead of cotton I had wool warps and also whereas both hers were out of the same yarn, mine were of different yarns and of different densities.



My initial sample was totally unsuccessful. My piqué pattern (pattern caused by the appearance of the underneath warp on the top face of the fabric) caused a few problems as far as the stuffing was concerned. A combination of too fine a pattern with too thick a stuffing yarn caused my stuffing to burst through the ground weave and become visible. After this I decided to keep things a little easier by simplifying by pattern so that the cloth resembled textured bands of different colour. This worked better although it didn't really have the X-factor I was hoping to achieve. My teacher said I could not achieve a more textured cloth which actually worked as a usable fabric on this warp. At least I have learnt the general method and can think about ways of increasing its visual impact in my weave work back at Chelsea.