Aims
Further explore and refine colour, composition and making techniques in yarn design
Find ways to translate making techniques and approaches used in collage work into yarn concepts, with a focus on flat yarns
Master and refine strong development and making techniques and approaches that you’ve already tackled.
I decided to use the blue stripe and one of the multicoloured collages developed for Exercise 3.4 in order to form the basis for this series of yarns. I felt that the blue collage presented an interesting variety of tone and textures in the papers used and the way they sat next to each other. The multicoloured collage immediately suggested to me a way of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing to create a yarn,
I did some research on yarns with a flat profile, such as:
braids
ribbons
slit and slit-film yarns (discovered these were yarns made from plastic sheeting split into yarn)
tape yarns.
I found the research on ribbons particularly interesting, as it threw up some of the different uses of ribbons:
their use as ornament to the female form (for hair, the body and decorative trims on clothing and headwear)
a constrasting use and symbolism for the male form, in particular for military medals, which I had not really thought about before
their use as decoration for animals (rosettes on horses and prize cattle, for example)
their function as decoration on packaging, or symbolism when used during the opening of a new building
their importance in cultures around the world, and in this country in 'Old English' culture, such as Morris dancing and the tradition of maypole dancing.
I also thought about their importance in the past, such as in the early nineteenth century, when they seemed to offer a little piece of luxury that could be added to an old bonnet or dress in order to revamp and renovate it, in a world where only a very few were rich enough to consume clothing in the way that we do today.
This led me on to looking for artists who use ribbons in their work.
Megan Geckler uses brightly coloured ribbons and tapes on a massive scale, often making site-specific architectural installations, that resemble the joyful simplicity of the rainbow:
https://megangeckler.com/portfolio-items/a-million-things-that-make-your-head-spin/ Accessed 19 July 2019.
Vadis Turner's work often employs materials that have been used or created by women (sometimes in a gently shocking way, such as used bedsheets and breastmilk), repurposed into a new form, as for Red Gate, below, made from braided bedsheets:
https://www.vadisturner.com/project/0581 Accessed 19 July 2019.
I also looked at the work of Anton Alvarez, as suggested in the course guide, particularly looking at his wrapped forms and how this alters our perception of the wrapped object:
http://antonalvarez.com/#how-long-is-a-piece-of-thread Accessed 19 July 2019.
I returned to some of the materials I had decoloured for Exercise 4.4, as well as developing new elements in response to the qualities of the paper collage. For my own yarns I used flat braids, tapes, fabric cut into strips and ribbons.
Here I translated the 'brick' design into yarn by stitching white crisscrossing lines on navy tape, which suggest a similar design, Other papers are recreated using layering of fabrics and machine stitch:
Other yarns developed in 4.4 reminded me of the other papers, such as the spot design below:
I added colour to the strips of navy linen that I had decoloured for Exercise 4.4, and felt that they echoed some of the many hues present in the blue collage:
I added colour by wetting the strips of cream tape and drawing the Inktense crayon along it so that it was more heavily coloured in some areas than others, particularly attaching to the diagonal ridges of the tapes construction, which I felt echoed the way I had cut some of the papers in the original blue collage:
Other yarns developed in 4.4 reminded me of the other papers, such as the spot design and the scrunched up look of the navy linen strips above.
I investigated alternative methods of construction:
Sticking using double-sided tape, which was particularly effective with the semitransparent striped chiffon ribbon as it enabled me to fold the striped ribbon to a series of Vs:
Attaching shorter lengths of yarn by cutting a slit and feeding through the next length, a bit like a daisy chain construction:
Machine stitching along the length of the yarn, as well as stitching strips of different yarn together and cutting into strips, to then reattach, echoing the cutting and sticking processes of the original collages:
My series of yarn designs and concepts inspired by collage:
