ATV4.2

Experimental yarns and concepts

Brief: using some of the colourwork from Assignment 3, using one of the full-colour palettes as inspiration gather a range of materials you can use to create linear concepts that reflect these colours. Use the colour and the print design as a source of inspiration for the linear designs and explore 1) colour placement and composition (3 yarns minimum), 2) materials exploration (3–5 yarns) and 3) texture and tonal qualities (2–3 tonal and 2–3 textured yarn explorations).

• Colour placement and composition

I chose this colour palette as it excites me, I like the individual colours and contrasts.

First I created the yarn on the left below. The navy yarn knotted to form lines, like the outlines in the fabric sample. But I felt the navy yarn took up too much of the yarn design so I cut the yarn closer to the knots. More prominence is now given to the gold, the yellow and the pink.

Different colour proportions with more gold on show. I plaited the pink and navy and then roughly plaited the gold fabric, the yellow ricrac and the navy/pink plait

Much neater! I like this one the best. It won’t work as a yarn as the fabric scrap is too wide and unwieldy but I like the colours and pattern.

I didn’t keep the two above but turned them into the yarn to the left: Navy netting instead of the navy yarn. I like the softer feel this has.

Gold ricrac, a bright yellow zip, pink netting and navy yarn knotted together with pink ribbon

Pink metallic yarn with pink and yellow rubber bands knotted in at regular intervals, gold ricrac and navy netting. quite loosely held together, I like the space and the patterns this creates. I did stitch it on the sewing machine afterwards though as it wasn’t a yarn more than just loose strands bundled together.

I was creating these yarns on Halloween and surrounded by sweets I found these ones reminded me of the bright colours in the african prints and I used a netting tube I created, filled with sweets I cut up, neatly separated with stitching in the same way the african prints I have used bave used navy and dark purple outlines to keep the strong colours separate. This started quite playfully but I actually think this works very well! The netting represents the neat patterns of the seeds and the background in the fabric sample used.

• Materials exploration

Looking again at my colour palettes from Assignment 3 in order to explore the physical qualities of the fabric and colour explorations further I chose the fabric on the left and especially the tan and yellow patterning, the green and even the blue for the sky above remind me of sunflower heads turning to seed…(photos of the sunflower heads are from my allotment). Also corrugated cardboard. I got an Amazon parcel last week with the most fabulously patterned lattice cut paper…I will explore dried seeds and leaves and cardboard and brown paper for this series of yarn explorations. But also net and netting and zigzag stitching…

For the yarn on the below left I stitched together two strands of netting and a strip of the paper lattice I had got in a parcel. I love the texture of this and things it works very well in representing the fabric sample’s textural feel. The yarn on the right was creeated by filling a gauze tube stitched on my sewing macine with dried brown chickpeas. I love how fluid this is, and how it changes when you hold it. The chickpease were used to represent the seeds, I spent ages in an asian greengrocers trying to find the right colour and shape seeds…

The yarn on the left below is a quick exploration of zigzag stitched green netting fabric and purple tangerine netting together. I like it actually, it’s quite unplanned and free and textural.

The yarn on the right has a netting tube I created filled with leaves and seedheads. I envisaged this would be quite exciting but it just looks messy and odd.

I’ve redone the last yarn, separated the large seed head in its own netting tube and crushing the dried leaves until they were broken into small pieces and putting these in to a second netting tube. This to me now works as two distinct pieces.

• Texture and tonal qualities

Tone

Looking at the neutral fabric sample the different tones remind me of drying plaster and mould and lichen

Tone vs value according to google: Tone is the degree of intensity or strength of a color. A pure lemon yellow has a high tone, while browns have low tones. Value describes the relative lightness and darkness of colors in a composition. White is the highest value and pure black the lowest.

Tonally speaking the range in my crochet piece isn’t very big, the colours sit on quite a narrow range. They are complimentary, they don’t clash

These are the yarns I collected. I will probably add some non-yarn elements too!

I don’t think I’m really getting this brief. I keep going back to the colours but not the tone. Am I supposed to use other colours with the same tone? I never quite cracked this.

For the next yarn I twisted wool roving, linen scraps and a thread of blue wool yarn and allowed it to twist back on itself. I like the yarn created but am not entirely sure it is fulfilling the brief.

I then created a yarn from some of the yarns above and some laser cut brown paper. I’m not really feeling this has created anything exciting to be honest

I created the yarn to the left after a few days of sitting on the less successful experiments. I added a lace ribbon and a strip of bubble wrap to the crochet and feel it is much more interesting and has some energy.

Texture

Texturally speaking there’s a lot going on in the crochet: loopy, knotted, raised, soft, vintage, holey, repeated patterns… I am going to explore making loops and crocheting to create the yarns for this part of the assignment.

For the first yarn I used gardener’s twine and a large crochet hook to make an exxageratedly loopy yarn. I didn’t look up how to make the crochet loopy stitch so I made this up as I went along, which has made this a yarn which is quite chaotic, random, and even though I like it it doesn’t quite convey the neatly repating patterns of the crochet doily I used as a starting point. I still think it is a succesful yarn. I also like the twine, both for its colour and texture which is quite rough like the plaster walls the colour palette reminds me of.

For the second yarn I actually looked up how to make the large loop crochet stitch. I chose to use a lenth of netting in a very pale pink. I liked the barely there colour and thenetting being so sheer and delicate really feeds in to the delicate doily and neutral colour palette. Crocheting with it has chnaged the nature of the netting to something much more substantial and solid, and neat. The stitches are well defined and neat and I really like how this has turned out. It reminds me of ballet tutus, little girls’ hair bows, wedding dress underskirts…

The final piece is a finger crochet piece made from embroidery thread. The loopiness and open texture to me really works to convey the original crochet piece and the painting of it.