Here, the aim was to:
look at your neutral colour explorations from Exercise 3.1 and collect a range of materials to help you explore and translate their tonal and textural qualities into yarns.
I thought about the tones present in the source and gathered a range of more conventional materials, looking to capture the essence of the muted colour palette, but pushing it more to include more intense colours, such as the greyish-lilac wool felt, purple plastic garlic netting and lilac stranded ribbon. I also included strips of fabric such as velvet and craft pipecleaners that were suggested by the texture of the source, as well as different thicknesses and textures of thread and yarn and beads:
I developed some different yarns using plying, knotting, crochet of multiple strands, braiding and attaching rectangles of felt by knotting multiple strands:
I also thought about the textures present in the source material and attempted to recreate some of the textural elements of the source sample, by pulling strands of grey and charcoal knitting wool through the gaps in the lilac stranded ribbon; by cutting into strips a section of plastic bag that had previously been printed with black squares (as a result of being the protective under layer when mark-making using hessian fabric); plaiting together three strands of different colour and texture thread and yarn; and combining a narrow strip of black polyester felt with a mixed wool and acrylic double-knitting yarn, that is twisted at semi-regular intervals to intersect the intensity of the black base:
In order to explore more unconventional materials, I used FIMO modelling clay to recreate the forms (grid, square, swirls) and tones (shades of grey, charcoal, lilac) present in the fabric sample:
Some of these I incorporated into yarn concepts and designs. Techniques included plying with materials with different textural properties: hard and soft, shiny and matte, flexible and unyielding:
I attempted to recreate the twirling nature of the painted source in modelling clay, as well as the grid effect produced by the chenille and base fabric in the original source.
I then recorded the results by sketching:
