Piecing the glove together

My first task was to make netting in the golden glow colours using the 'friendship bracelet' knotting technique I learned on holiday. I used yarns varying from polycotton sewing thread, embroidery silk, plastic yarn from a door curtain for its reflective qualities. I also used some copper florists wire, in part because of the shine and colour, and also because it gave the net a structure and stiffness that meant it would not move too much between the other layers of the glove. As you see I focussed on regular parallels of brown knots in some places, and more organic-looking lines in others, to reflect the complexity that I wanted to symbolise by it.

I cut out the fabric to the size of a cheap shop ring stand hand that I bought on the internet. I pinned the netting to the part of the glove which would be on the back of the hand, and unpicked the pink sample I had made to check my glove pattern.

I used two colours of orange - the paler one I used in the last entry, and a yellow-red shot fabric I had in stock which gave a particularly attractive deeper glow. You can just see in this photo that it also had a pattern to it, but I made sure this didn't show.

You can see that I cut the paler yellow on a slant to vary the colour contrast coming through the outer glove.

The seems are on the outside because this is the lining of the glove. I didn't dare do this on my machine as the fabric was very easy to fray, and the seems narrow and curved, so I had to be accurate.














At this point I realise that I didn't take any photos of the outer layer during construction.
How I made it is I cut out the pattern as for the lining, using the tracing paper pattern, and patterns I had traced from the thumb shape and finger gussets. I made it quite a bit longer than the lining, because I was thinking about the finish and thought it would be better to have the edges trailing and trimmed into the shapes roots make, so that the feeling was more evocative of bark/ roots. And the idea of hemming it like a normal glove obviously would detract from the whole symbolic idea of it.

I sewed together the finger and thumb seams and then put it onto the stand over the lining. This was because it became obvious that once I had sewn it all together it would not be stretchy enough to come off. This is a bit sad because it means the glove cannot be worn by a person. Perhaps if I ever make a pair I will make sure the lining is made of more stretchy fabrics! I suppose this late realisation just goes to show that it's  a good idea to make a trial run.

As I was piecing together the outer layer by hand, and during the next step when I was cutting slits in the valleys of the fabric to let the glow and netting show through, I had lots of time to imagine how I was going to finish the piece. I could see that there was a need to make it more obviously bark/root like, and that there was a lot of movement in the parallel folds of the fabric. The solution seemed obvious - to sew the folds together to create oval negative spaces like the ones in the purple tissue-paper sampler.

Detail of back of the hand of glove showing the shapes I made by sewing the parallel folds together in places.
Between them you can see the knotted net, and below that the yellow and orange lining fabric glowing through.

I did this over the back of the hand, and wrist, but felt that doing it on the rest of the glove would be excessive, and would remove the nice bark-like contrast between the two sides of it.

This photo shows the bark-like effect of the parallel folds without the slits or sewn shapes.
In a way it helps this illusion that the thumb became a bit twisted during the making!

At the bottom of the glove I snipped it and created an irregular widening base so that it looked a bit like the roots of a tree reaching the ground. This may or may not work when a glove is worn on an arm, in this case it is displayed on a stand, and the lower edge of the glove is therefore 'rooting it' to the surface it sits on. I made a couple of longer 'roots' by snipping into the edges of folds, in order to reinforce this visual idea.

My final piece for Assignment 4 showing the texture made by sewing the folds together
and the root-like edge finish

My final piece for assignment 4 in different light which shows the contrasting glow
and complexity within

Glove Colour Pattern and Texture

When I went to find the right colour of red-purple fabric for the outside of my glove, I was thinking that it had to be fine and pliable, so that I could use it a bit like the tissue paper in the sketchbook sampler shown here. But with slits showing an underlying layer of fabric and 'friendship bracelet' inspired netting in the contrasting fabric.

Sketchbook sample showing tissue paper
PVA and gel pen design

I was lucky enough to come across this fabric, that is made already covered in quite deep parallel pleats, with much finer weave in between them.

Here is what it looks like against cream background. The colour from this photo is very inaccurate - it's much less blue than this in reality. 

But you can see that the underlying fabric is visible as long lozenge-shapes of paler colour between the soft parallels.

I made slits in the valleys and tried this over pale orange fabric. This gives two different contrasting colours - the subtle change in the purple where it is not cut, and the more glowing colour contrast where it is.

And this one shows what happens with a lemon yellow background fabric. Instead of the glow imparted on the orange by the contrast, in this case the purple makes the yellow look almost lime coloured and it loses the 'dark light' visual motif I was going for.








My next step was to try out laying the slitted fabric over the netting and the contrasting fabric.

This shows what a single slit could do, which had the contrasts, and the shape nicely, and reflected something of the way I was hoping the curved pleats might fall.

So I then tried it with multiple slits...



As you can see this didn't give me the visual appearance I was looking for - the fabric buckled in a way I didn't want; the curved lines were not variable in width and complexity; and there was no opportunity for using the difference between the contrast described above. It lost most of the aspects of its appearance, contrast and texture that I was after! The one on the right shows the same thing but taken with a flash.This allows you to see how much more interesting it is when you can see the yellow both behind the netting and in the valleys. The colour is a bit more accurate too.

















I decided to try putting slits in further apart, so as to utilise this difference in glow, and to allow myself more opportunity to use the curves of the parallel pleats for texture and pattern.

As you can see this worked well to give me a resulting sample that reflected the attractive
aspects of my sampler (above)

Wounds

Thinking about the surface layer of this assignment piece has got me thinking about the meaning of the gashes, and reminded me of Roseanne Hawksley's sewn wounds. There was also a deceptively simple piece in an amateur show in Bristol last year which had some of the same imagery. And another piece at the PRISM show earlier this year.

Roseanne Hawksley's painful repairs

All these are making me wonder if I can't use some representation of skin as the surface layer, and have the slit or slits cutting into that, as a development of my train tunnel into belly photo.

Freckled skin might be interesting to print onto fabric.

One of my samplers from
the first part of
'Exploring Ideas' 

Underfabric with printed organza overlaid.

The edge of the printing, showing the texture it adds.

Gloves

Mood board

Deciding on an object to make:
I had been thinking that I wanted to make an object that represented the difference between the amazing and wonderful natural complexity of the inner person, and the way that only shows through in a 'glass darkly' kind of way to the outside. And perhaps even to suggest to the person looking at it that the 'rind' over the top was also part of the wonderful natural expression of the person inside.

Pair of embroidered leather gloves
Made in England 1615-1625
Leather embroidered with gilt and
silver-gilt thread
V&A London

Then I took a cousin to the V&A to look at the Wedding Dress exhibition, and we had a look at another gallery as well, with examples of 17th Century furniture and objects. There were lots of gloves there.

Glove 1600-1625
Kid leather and satin embroidered with silk,
silver-gilt threads and seed pearls, with silver-gilt
bobbin lace and spangles. Made in England
V&A London

Gloves were used to indicate social status, to make the hands and fingers look long and thin which was associated with attractive personality traits, and were very similar for men and women.

Glove 1660-1680
The curls around the wrist are made from fabric,
and are very modern looking in the sense that they
change the whole 3D feel and proportions of the hand.
V&A London

I was initially thinking of making a glove covered in skin, but when I started on this it was too difficult not to have connotations of dead flesh, and also intrinsically hard to get a good representation of the colour and pattern of skin.

So I decided on a glove that was a bit like bark, or roots, covering a tree, reflecting my studies of roots from earlier in Exploring Ideas. This also had the advantage of intrinsically symbolising a barrier made from inside.

The process of coming to this decision has been a slow gathering of apparently unrelated threads. I was fretting a bit that I hadn't decided yet, and then one day it dawned on me that I had already decided, without knowing it!

Creating a glove pattern:
In order to make a glove I had to make a pattern for it. I based it on a kid glove that I had kept of my grandmother's.

I drew an approximate pattern onto tracing paper by drawing round the shapes of the glove.

I traced this pattern onto fabric, a tacked it together to check the fit.

My first attempt at the thumb left a gap.                                    

Which I corrected using an extra arc of fabric. When I come to make the final version, I have unpicked the glove, and I will cut these two pieces together.

This is what it looks like with the printed organza over the top.
My idea is to cut slits into the fabric of the glove, and use the folded printed organza as texture around the edges of the slits to emphasise the shapes.

Using light inside

Sketchbook image of how I might produce the effect of light coming through a slit.

This was an exploration of my thinking about the contrast between the slit "golden light" and the surrounding areas.

Using copper florists wire for its flexible but strong properties, and it's ability to withstand the heat of being so close to a light bulb, I wrapped it round picture wire uprights, to give the structure of the sketchbook picture. Also referring to the structure of African huts and the shapes in the little pictures below, from earlier sketchbooks and samplers.

With light coming through I can see that:
1. This emphasises the edges rather than the split
2. It might be better to give the impression of light rather than having actual light coming through.
More interesting to look at.
3. There needs to be more breadth, and more regularity, to the 'verticals' to put the emphasis on the split-ness.
4. The presence of a warm light bulb reduces the options for materials.

Another sampler I made to explore the idea of light inside was on the sewing machine, with layers of fabric split apart and joined by stitching onto dissovable fabric.

I found that the requirements of the dissovable fabric for connections and reinforcement of the stitching meant that some of the expressive lines I wanted to make became thicker and more vertical than I wanted them to be. For example, there had to be some stitching down the sides of the slit, which interfered with the pattern of horizontal lines that I wanted to emphasise, and smoothed out some of the attractive complexity of the slit's edge.

On the other hand, stitching seems to be a good way to introduce colour in a different way, and has the potential for subtle shading. I might well use this technique on another occasion, but it doesn't seem suitable for this piece.

Next stage of designing

Pulling threads to make an image

I pulled out some fabrics in the range of 'golden light' colours which would either allow the light through or reflect it.

The pile on the left is what I found.

The grey chiffon is clearly not in the colour range and was removed after this photo.

I used the A4 drawing of cork tree bark as my template and used it to cut threads in the layers of fabric, starting with the palest chiffon

Palest pink satin underneath

Light behind

I tried to work out a patter for each layer that would give
a final arrangement like the cork bark, with areas of greater
depth and areas with closer lines. This is at layer 3.

This is one of the more translucent layers against
a window. This made me think again about
what imagery might be meaningful for this piece.

Close-up of the next layer in
progress

The light coming trhough from behind gives it an attractive glow, and shows the variety of colour achieved, but also reveals that I could have
paid more attention to the detail of the pattern when designing it.

Pinboard showing that this sample reflected the image of cork bark, but that it needed some oversewing to get the detail. (Some difficulties getting a photo that shows the structure without the flash light being reflected from the surface so much that it confuses the image. )

Receiving feedback

I need to write something here about the experience of receiving feedback from my tutor. Or from anyone whose opinion I respect, in fact. Because I have just had a long period of difficulty getting down to working on this project, and I think the two are related.

I had no trouble at all working in my sketchbook in a constructive and rewarding way when there was no expectation of me doing that, during the 'Researching Artists' part of this course. But somehow, since getting feedback from my tutor about my work on that section, I have been unable to find the time. I think this is something like 'writer's block', and therefore something that I will have to learn to deal with better.

I have also noticed during previous coursework, that the first time I read feedback or assessments, the only bits I see or remember are the parts about how I could improve. I feel useless and that there is little point in carrying on. And I withdraw into the desert to lick my wounds. It is only later, when I pluck up courage to read the thing again, that I find that overall the feedback was positive, appreciative of the good things, and encouraging, and I wonder how I could have so misinterpreted what I read.

This recent episode of this critique-wilt has been worse than the rest, and has resulted in a longer period of desert. I had a different attitude to this academic part of the course, partly because I was confident that I wouldn't have any trouble with it, as I felt good about what I had submitted for the assignment, and because of all my previous higher education being word-based. (All the other assignments have been voyages into the dark for me, so I had hope but few expectations of a good result.) And then I find that, contrary to my expectations, what came back seemed to be a long list of things that I did wrong.

Of course, this kind of writing has its own rules, which I was foolish not to stick to (as much as I was aware of them).

Of course, this is my first ever marked essay about an artist, so what can I really have expected.

Of course, I am still early in my Textile Art education and how else will I learn.

Of course, when I look through the feedback again, it's a different story. I seem to have done OK after all/

I know all these things, but somehow receiving this feedback still made me procrastinate about the next assignment for a long eight weeks. So I will have to extend my deadline again, and I have lost the creative oasis I was in at that time, so there is some work to be done getting back into it.

Sheila Hicks miniature
http://rationalbeauty-jeanette.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/
sheila-hicks-weaving-as-metaphor.html

How? By looking at what I have done already, and try to get myself, if not back into that one, into a creative state of mind.

I wonder whether this rather more painful episode might add some depth to what I make in the end (here's hoping!).

I suspect that, in fact, I have been working on these ideas in a subterranean way all along.

Here are a selection of the pinterest images I have picked up during that 8 weeks, that seem to be related to the work I've been avoiding...

From Style.com
Iris van Herpen SS 2011

http://sweetpeapath.tumblr.com/
Knitting

Sheila Hicks - From what I have seen
so far, a textile artist
worth researching further.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/antoinettaricoletta/4376180539/

Tawny oil feathers detail
2436ccd7efe6b20b28c39a2bb987c1e0.jpg

Patrick Dougherty installation
from www.bonexpose.com
58659a57386aeb8d9d54f03ec558c75e.jpg