Awards and Accolades

 In 2010 I was the winner at New Designers of the New Designers WorshipfulCompany of Weavers Associate Prize. The award was for my final years work based around all aspects of the bird; from highly detailed woven fabrics to heavily textured pieces. This was an incredible prize and one which I am both extremely proud of and honoured to of received.


Also in my final year I won two awards from The Bradford Textile Society which was a First place and also a commendation for another.

This was my first place winning design. Hand drawn and manipulated on photoshop to create a strong detailed mirrored image of a bird in flight.

 

This design was reworked into to create something soft and textured all done by hand using a mixture of techniques including needle felting.

Print Designs

Drawing and print go hand in hand with one another. So in this post you will see some of my prints based on birds. The idea behind these prints is imagination. From a far the prints can be seen as many different things, someone once said to me “those butterflies are beautiful” but as you become closer to the print the strong details of the bird are shown.

I hope you enjoy. If any of them take your fancy please get in contact as these can be reprint to custom size for sale.

Adding texture to my weaves

The feel of fabric is so important. Here I have used several different techniques to increase the softness of the fabric and to also increase the vibrancy of the colour;  this then also plumped the fibres and created something very beautiful and warming.

Adding colour to my Jacquard weaves

To give these black and white fabrics colour I used the method felting. This not only gave the fabrics colour but also a new texture, making a truly luxurious fabric. You can see with these two examples how the felting can be done in large areas and also very delicate area, both working brilliantly and creating two different appearances to the fabric.

Pleats, pleats and more pleats

This method of weaving is extremly time consuming, but very fulling. Having woven large sections of fabric only to then fold the fabric to create these pleats felt
crazy; however the end results worked really well and produced something that can only be described as luxurious.



With this design I was wanted to create something that was full, something that if produce for what intended (cushion) you would be able to fall intot the fabric and it would just wrap around your body.

I love this design, I think the colours together are very contemporary, and with the way the pleats wrinkle together gives a differnt look to the other pleated fabric that I have produced.

I tried here to make various pleats off all different sizes, and to add interest I hand felted colours inbetween some of the pleats. I choose to do this as it gives a strong hint of colour, which you get to see as the pleats move.

I went on to experiment with patterns on the pleate . It adds colour and an extra dimention to the design.

Jacquard weaves.....the details of a bird

The jaquard enabled me to weave many different fabrics with many differnt designs. I based my project on birds which gave me a wide variety of patterns to play with.



I wanted to make some of my designs obvious that I looking at birds but also stuble enough to work for as a commercial fabric.








The foot print design has to differnt results. The design to the left is the back of the cloth. To prduce the great colour I used silk to it its lavish finish.














The design here was based on feathers. Using different weave structures to create a feater texture. It was even more interesting when turning the cloth over. The the black end of the warp weaving on the back of the cloth meant that there was a high contrast in the design, which works really well.