Yesterday was the first day of spring. Battersea Park is beautiful, my city escape.

Our last whopper of a project is over, and easter break is in sight (3 days!!)

Our latest project was based on Romney Marsh, it was a social engagement project and our first live brief. Romney has very high unemployment rates and with the nuclear power station closing down, more jobs are being lost. A company called Romney Tweeds, are starting up this project with the aim to employ young people coming out of college and teaching them to weave. Romney, has a long history of weaving and the Romney sheep is a top class breed! 

We had to create tweeds based on the landscape. Whilst on the trip the weather was awful and we all got drenched, the sea front and little wooden shacks were deserted. I created my concept on the idea that everybody had left to hibernate through the winter and on the dawning of spring life will return. I had two very different colour pallets, and worked with some of the brightest brights. We had to dye all our own yarn for this project, as tweeds are 100% wool. To finish off the project we had to pitch our work and research to a panel of 16 people from industry from menswear designers to weavers and tailors, it was a pretty big ask - but i really enjoyed it and the adrenalin carried me through until i crashed in the pub after with warren! 

Colour graduation

Honeycomb brights

Contrasting weight

Shadow stripe

Stripe Trim

Large Check

Stripe Trim

Honeycomb 

Digital Shirting designs.

Tweed waistcoat illustration

Trousers with contrasting turn ups with my shirt design.

Collaged clash of tweeds!

Back in January we started off the term with a ribbons & trims project. 

Condensed little weaves, cause hard work. 

This was my attempt. Inspired by the motion of waves & land. 

There was a day, maybe mid way through? that was awful - i spent hours trying to make my salmon pink warp work. Disheartened, i found it hard to see past what was sitting in front of me, - 7 odd hours of weaving, and all i had to show was 4inches of ugly yarns and ugly patterns. 

Then, like a powerful punch i realised i need to know how to fail. For, that day i realised id worked out what didn't work and tomorrow - it can only get better. 

A friend told me that the creative team at 'apple' are expected to often fail. Without finding the freedom of failure, we are limiting ourselves to perfection - and creativity doesn't grown in an atmosphere of perfection. Creativity grows when your allowed to experiment and confidence grows when that journey is acknowledged. 

Its taken me 6 weeks to blog about this because i don't love my work. However, i love what i've learnt. I get pretty low at times whilst creating something, but usually its followed by the high of a discovery - now im learning to distinguish my emotions, so a few little threads don't absorb my heart. 

I am fascinated by this notion of perfection + failure + creativity, i feel it will work my brain for a few years to come. 

To end this term our print project was followed by a month of weaving. I instantly felt more settled and relaxed amongst the lines of looms with a cup of tea sat next to me. 

I decided that i wanted to give natural dyeing a shot, so i set about dying my warp a selection of colours. I made life much harder for myself, and because of the 'unknown' chemicals, i had to do it at home on our little hob.... we still have a bottle of 'blackberry juice'. 

My original plan was to use indigo to make a blue. But indigo is tricky as it requires a chemical reaction to occur, and after 4 attempts i still couldn't get it to work, so i decided to replace it with blackberries. Which produced this AMAZING pink, when it came out (i was a little scared), but then formed a beautiful silvery lilac, when it dried! Success! 

I Tried picking buckthorn berries whilst i went back home to wales, but realised that id need 20 x the amount. I decided to use a linen warp, which i loved, it creates a real brittle texture but holds the colour really well. 

The easiest was onion skins, I mixed it with a bit of madder and got 2 amazing shades of a golden yellow/ brown. Yum! 

So these are my finished hanks, 6 in total, ready to be wound the threaded into my loom. I was so happy with the results, but it took such a long time. You need to begin where you wish to continue at some point! 

Now to the loom...

Threading is a long long process, it takes about a day just to pull all the threads through in the right sequence. As you can see i have 2 warps, a striped one and a plain one of linen,silk & cotton mix. This allows me to add the stripes when i want to, or create pleats or a frayed effect. 

We spend the first few days discovering what our warp can do, and produce test strips which we refer to later on for our final samples.

These are my final samples...

They were inspired by my trip to Sri Lanka in the summer, the dry heat & the worn state of buildings, plus the stripes of some traditional textiles i brought out there. 

I really enjoyed it and i felt like i was achieving what i wanted to. It is such a slow process - and i think thats what draws me to it, you can't make it much quicker and thats so counter cultural. In the world of fashion that moves so quickly, the weavers move at the speed the yarn drys.

I've decided to specialise in weave, so from now untill the end of my degree, that is what i'll be doing! YIPPY! xx

 I've been meaning to do this for too long! However, i handed my work in on Thursday and now i feel like i can finally breath. Its been an intense term!

So 2 weeks ago today, i got engaged! Other than a few fluttering thoughts it was a complete surprise, and even when he got down on one knee my mind was like 'what are you doing?' but my spirit was way ahead, and my nerves told me something immense was going to happen! 

I Love this 2 week point...

 the decrease of uni work means i can focus on a wedding! I feel like this is what i've been waiting for, guilt free time with my Pinterest account. 

So, i was thinking about how to mark this life event on hear - the actual proposal story is quite beautifully funny, and its much better told in person. I did receive some rather charming cards, so i thought i'd share with you what this means to other people. 

There are two areas of this curation - 

1) Beautifully humorous / cute / child-like

2) delicate / paper - cut / collage

Im quite into cards, so hear are my 6 favourites (of the ones in my house, warren also has some lovely ones.)....

From Aedan

From Number 90

From Grace

From Sophie

From Mackenzie clan

From Aunty, Uncle & Cousins.

I have an exhibition on tuesday/wednesday & thursday - so will try and post pictures of my work soon!