ATV5:5 Capsule collection

My plan to study a textile degree started after I went to the RA summer show and saw a huge sculpture by Joanna Vasconcelos which was in part crocheted, part sewn, and the size and exuberance of it made me so happy, I realised I needed to do something that allowed me to play and make fun but “useless” creations.

My working life is teaching people to sew, following the same rules and patterns over and over. I knit a lot but had been following patterns for many years and although I always go off piste with colour and yarn choices I don’t waiver from the patterns. In short I hadn’t played for years.

Every other year there’s an open studio event in my local area and last year I crocheted huge flowers for my garden which I’ve left up, they still grace the path to my front door! I also dressed a dummy in crochet doilies…

A long winded way of saying I want to do some crochet explorations, create grooves and pleats and spikes…

Review point: context

I put all my successful experiments from part 2 and 3 on a board to get a feel for the theme, to see what I wanted to explore further, to see what really worked and what didn’t. I see folds and pleats and stripes and shirring and knots and valleys and hills, pinks and bluey greens and purples, holes and tears…I wanted more texture and to use the pleating and shirring again, and also I wanted to use crochet in a playful way to create ridges and lumps and holes…

This piece of fabric was actually underneath the other fabric being painted but I liked the random paint splodges and used it. I created a hill by shirring in a spiral, the used more shirring on the purple fabric to create the outer edges, and then all of it was mounted on some textural blue wool

I used a soluable medium to stitch a chunky yarn into loops and then connected these with meandering free motion stitches, before washing away the Solvy

I stitched thin crossing ridges into some muslin, scratched some of the fabric away with a pin and a stitch unpicked, and then dyed the whole piece with water colour paint

I layered felt, organza, a silk sari yarn and some very worn duck egg blue cotton, stitched these toegther with lines, deliberately allowing the fabric to shift and pull, I then painted over the top with water colours before cutting between the stitch lines and hand washing the piece to create texture. Probably my favourite piece in this collection!

I stitched Tyvex to felt, painted it, mekted it with a heat gun, and then embroidered over the top. Finally i crocheted a very textural border around it

I created meandering very thin pleats, painted the fabric and then stitched a very thick yarn over the top

I used various yarns and hooks to crochet this very textural piece. I had no plan, I just let the piece dictate what was going to happen next