Single stripe wool experiements

I had decided that since I was running low on some colours, i would wind two very small warps on a loom at the same time and weave them together as a final tester warp before I go on to create my larger collection fabrics. I had less than a month until my formative assessment and a week until my next tutorial and I really wanted enough of ideas to move on with, and test out a very fancy yarns I had received. However, I was a bit over worked and decided in the end to weave the warps one after the other just so I wouldn't confuse myself. The warps warp 1.90 meters long and about 12 cm wide.

Wet finishing

I had a wonderful suprised after wet finishing my latest warp, I have certainly created a much more resolved idea within the sample as seen below. If has felted very well and I am very proud of the effect I manged to achieve now that I understand more and more how the felting technique works with this yarn.

Cotton/Wool mixed weaving

Now at this stage I had dyed a small collection of colours that had some successful and unsuccessful shades. I have now come to a point were I am running low and will need to re-dye more colours. But before that I would like to make as many samples as I can before then in the existing pool of colours I have and improve on some the ideas I had made in the exploratory unit as well as the samples made earlier last month. I now finally understand that by hand manipulating the threads in a particular way, I can achieve the desired results. This was only possible through trial and error and now I am feeling more confident in my ideas I wound a 2 meter warp using a specific sett of thick wool threads and thinner cotton threads to make the warp you see below. On a very small scale just to test this in a way I feel comfortable. Using a both natural and fancy yarns such as elastic, and unwashed high twist yarn as a highlighted feature. I enjoyed weaving this warp and have received some really positive feedback from peers around the studio.

Box collapse weaving

I have set up this warp to 40 cm by 1.90 meters long. with 5 repeats of cotton and wool designed across the width. To equate for the shrinking of the wool that will occur in the wet finishing process, I have made the wool almost twice the size to create a the "boxes" of collapse I wanted. I think the results were okay nothing I too impressed about but, I think that this was because of the colour dyeing process. I used a dobby loom and wet finished the samples at 80 degrees.

Research into textile jewellry

After finishing my lager samples i had a tutorial. I was advised to begin thinking clearly about my context and applications for my fabrics. I have had some understanding that currently my samples aren't structurally strong enough to form a fabric for clothing. I need to think about how I can improve the durablity of the work that I make. I may also return to my sketching again as well as more research into textile jewellry designers to help understand the possiblities of this chosen context.I have research one designer such as Nora Fok. (these images don't belong to me)

Fabric test shoot

I decided to play around with my samples by pinning them in various different shapes to understand and record how I could manipulate my fabrics further to develop some more ideas for weaving future warps. I have fun with this shoot. And look forward to applying my fabrics for a clear context.

Merino Acid and Cotton Procion dyeing

For my next larger scale piece I decided to work with a fine merino wool 18 t.p.i with, cotton mercerised 2/16's. I intend to weave a box collapse style warp with sections of alternate thread across the width and length of the warp. The dyeing process was not easy and the colours came out very wrong, as the calculations for each dye were a mixture of 3 different shades, which makes the result unpredictable. I  however unfortunately have to ignore this factor and continue on with using what I have.