In the last post, I shared some of my artwork for Project 3. There was a ripple style motif that caught my eye early on, and it seemed to keep cropping up as I continued my visual research. During our five days in college in September, we visited an exhibition at Barnsley Civic,Knitwear: Chanel to Westwood. It was fascinating, with knitwear on display from the 1920s to the modern day, and several pieces caught my eye. We were encouraged to take photos, sketch and make notes throughout our time there, and when I got back, I gathered my ideas in my main sketchbook. You can see that ripple motif threadibgbthrough the fair isle patterns and some heavy knit jackets…
It’s also there in some of the wartime knits.
We also had a look at some of the sample books available in the Bradford Textile Archive. Oh look, I found it again!
This side of visual research was really interesting and something I’d like to repeat again in the future.
This time in Bradford also gave us a chance to carry out product research in the designer shops of Leeds, which was hilarious, as I am so not a designer person! It was an education. The overwhelming memory involves being stunned by Dolce and Gabbana charging over £1000 for a tunic made from crimplene with raw edges exposed. I am so obviously NOT their target customer! In the weeks following, I focussed my research on scarves made by designer makers.
So, colour palette had been decided on in broad terms, it was now time to fix the yarn choices and start sampling…
