Work-In-Progress

I want to share a few behind-the-scenes peeks of things I've been working on for my FMP. I've been looking at fast food and branding, combined with time consuming hand rendered techniques. Rug hooking, weaving, cross stitch and knitting.

Final Major Project Collages

After a little final major panicking, I went out and bought a handful of fashion magazines and, remembering how much I enjoyed the collage project, I got my scalpel out and reconstructed outfits for the models in Vogue magazine, using fashion branding.

I really like how eye-catching these images are - I want to experiment with replacing the labels with advertising from craft magazines.

21st Century Living

Some postcards I made to kickstart some ideas for my Final Major Project. It's not been an easy ride so far. I'm looking at the throwaway culture of today's society and I've finally, finally, hit some inspiration.

Pretty Inspirational: Spring Knitting and Stitching Show

A couple of weekends back, Kim and I went to the Spring Knitting & Stitching Show at Olympia. I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show at Ally Pally back in October and I was excited for the Spring show - purely so I could lust over pretty yarns and get some inspiration for future projects.

Sari yarn! The colours are gorgeous, they'd look amazing crocheted into a rug. Or a bag...

They had an exhibition of patchwork quilts, which made me feel a little inadequate about my own quilt.

These two. Favourites of mine.

There were some beautiful displays of pure wool yarn, I loved this snood / cowl, it has an element of a Jacobean Ruff about it!

I think because it was missing the knitted model village and the Tales of the Unfinished exhibition, it wasn't quite as exciting as the autumn show, but I still bought some pretty yarn, which is a day well spent in my opinion.

Inspiration Fix: Wool House

Being a knitter, I am naturally a big fan of wool. Proper wool-wool. Not cheapy acrylic yarn. But I hadn't really heard about The Campaign For Wool until I heard about the Wool House Event at Somerset House. Wool House was the biggest ever celebration of wool and I'm so glad I got to visit.

This rug was beautiful. Weaving is amazing.

Weaving is a relatively new discovery of mine, that I am absolutely fascinated by, so looking at the variety of looms at work in the exhibition was fascinating. A total highlight for me.

These swatches by Anna Wilkinson - author of Learn to Knit, Love to Knit - and a newfound inspiration to me, are so beautiful. They were possibly my favourite exhibit on show. I love colour work.

It may sound silly, but I'm so grateful they didn't have anything for sale, or I'd have spent an absolute fortune! For more information about Wool House, The Campaign For Wool and some gorgeous photographs check out their site here.

Weaving: My new favourite past-time

Weaving has been on my to-do list for a while now and seeing as I had a spare afternoon this week, I set about making a very basic homemade loom, so I could give it a try.

You may not be aware of my embarrassingly large yarn collection, but it does come in handy for projects like this. I stitched the result into a purse, and I'm really pleased with it. It's such a good feeling to create a fabric strand by strand.

Schoolwork: Collage Project

This was the final project under the Power Of 3 brief - and I can't pretend I'm not glad it's over - the number 3 is not my favourite theme upon which to base work. Collage however, has probably been my favourite of three rotations. I chose to look at the idea of 3 Meals A Day and created little 'food characters' which I intended to animate. However, we have an enormous deadline looming (it's tomorrow! Argh! But I'm nearly done - yay!) and that took priority for me, so I had very little time to spend on this project. 
So instead of animating the characters, I photographed them in my kitchen. I'm pleased with the outcomes, and the crit (which was yesterday) went better than I expected. I'm definitely going to develop this idea over the Easter Break - if it ever arrives!