Keeping busy

With college being closed and snow everywhere I have had to find things to do at home in the warm. I decided to have a go at making cushions and found that I thoroughly enjoyed it!

All the cushions are hand printed using a lino cut of an owl or robin and then embellished or left plain. I then used the envelope method to make up the cover. Fab I love them and they will become Christmas presents for the family.

I wonder if I could make some up for my final major once I've got designs printed, something to think about.

All prints are copyright.

Back to the drawing board!

All handed in! Friday 19th Nov was a big day for me, time to hand in minor project and make sure everything was all present and correct. Presentation went smoothly, I didn't used to like doing them and used to get quite nervous. Now I'm not so bad and it's a time see the other students work too.

So it's back to the drawing board and producing more imagery for more designs for my Final Major Project. I can hardly believe that that time has come around, so quick! I'm carrying on with the same theme, but with a few tweaks here and there. So look out for more mathematical patterns and microscopic detail.

Print, print and print!

It's all go at college with everyone printing their socks off. Here are a couple of my designs. I enjoyed rotating and flipping images to create a pattern and this time I've gone bold and bright, with a few subtle colours thrown in to give the eyes a rest.

Hand in next Friday eekk! Lots of embroidery and finishing off to do over the next week and a bit.

Minor Project in full swing!

I am now printing and painting out my final designs. I love this part when you get to see your patterns come to life. It doesn't seem that long ago I was drawing images and wondering what on earth I was going to do with them!

My colours are bolder than usual, as I felt inspired by the digitally enhanced images of cells taken by an electron microscope.

Images are all copyright to Tracy Bidwell.

This week I have been busy printing and dying fabrics. I am pleased with some of my prints, others have not turned out quite so well. Those that have worked I will add to my final sample collection. The ones that didn't quite make it will end up in my development book and I will look at why they didn't work so well.

I am hoping to do some hand embroidery on top of the prints so that will keep me busy, on these dark nights!

I will post a picture of my stuff on the next post.

This last week I have been working on my pattern repeats. It's all good fun and I really enjoy doing them and fiddling with the imagery to create an interesting design (well we hope!).

Although if an image is fiddly then the repeats take a little longer and you do get a bit tired of drawing the same thing a zillion times, but hopefully it's all worth it in the end!

Next week I hope to get screens developed and get printing, can't wait to get into those drafty old printrooms again yipee.

My home for 3rd year!

This is part of my bay at college and shows some of the imagery that will hopefully inspire some interesting designs.

My drawing sheets are quite detailed and I have enjoyed using different geometric shapes to draw into. Even surprised myself with some of the things I've drawn, come out pretty well. I just hope I can translate this to my pattern development and then into print :-}

Minor project is in full swing and drawing sheets are starting to appear, albeit slowly. The first few sheets are always the slowest and then I get into the mind set and things speed up (well we hope!)

My theme is mathematical patterns in nature so should prompt some interesting designs. Will keep you posted.

Hoping to get to all the design events in the North East that seem to spring up in October. Good for inspiration, but also for the new professional file we have to fill!

New Term!

New term, new project, THIRD year!! It has come round so fast and now all I need to do is put my best foot forward and start as I mean to go on and have a great last year of being a student.

Looking forward to being in the print rooms again and coming home covered in dye! Have a new bay, which has yet to be made truly mine, but give me a few days and some blu tac and it will be.

I will try and keep you up to date with what I'm up to and what I'm thinking and developing.

Work Placement

It's been a while I know but been pretty busy over the last month or so. I had a fab time at my work placement at the John Lewis archive. Learnt lots about the history of design and also how a design goes from paper onto fabric. The whole archive is like being in a sweet shop for a fledgling surface designer, all that choice for inspiration! This wood block is from the archive and is a great example of how detailed they could be and how big.

Reunited

Just been reunited with my first year work after college had it in their archive for the last year. Looking through it I had almost forgotten just how much work we did that year.

The image is of some of my embroidery done for the fashion project. It was based on peonies and took me ages to sew as I did it all by hand.

Time to take it easy!

Hand in done so time to chill out and relax, well for a little while at least. Feels a bit weird not having any college work to do, but I do have plenty of other jobs to catch up on now I'm not so busy. Maybe I'll just take a leaf out of my cats book first and just take it easy for a few days, before tackling things such as the enormous ironing pile!!

Tulips from Yorkshire

Constable Burton Hall is the setting for these beautiful tulips. On a recent visit to the garden we were amazed by the amount of tulips and the varieties. I liked the delicate colour of this one called beloved I think (?) and the deeper shading on the centre of the petal, wonder if I could do a design based on these simple but beautiful flowers.

Hand In!

Hand in on Monday, so I'm busy putting all my work together today. Starting to feel a little weird that it's the last one of the year and that in a few weeks I'll be a 3rd year!

I have really enjoyed this year, there have been ups and downs, but on the whole its been a fab 2nd year of my degree. I wonder what exciting things are in store for us as 3rd years.

This is my design for this project, it's based on buildings around Newcastle and a mixture of old and new. I've had a great time taking photos of all the architecture and even sneaked some in from summer holidays.

Inspired by Bawden

Edward Bawden is my favourite illustrator and artist. I love his use of colour and the fact he used lino cuts on occasion. He has really inspired my present project at college, which is based on architecture and the mix match of old and new buildings we find in our cities.

Super lambbanana

A different kind of spring lamb, this was spotted on our trip to Liverpool. It's called a "super lambbanana" and was one of many during Liverpool's bid for city of culture. I think it's quite cute, at the time of the bid the decoration on each one was different and carried out by local schools etc.

patterns, patterns and more pattens

Today I am working on pattern repeats and starting to wonder why I chose to repeat what seems like millions of doors. Time for a tea break I think and give the poor eyes a rest.

Spring has sprung!

Spring is definitely here at last! On a tour of the West coast last week, we saw lots of new lambs bouncing around in the sun. It was so lovely to see them and it was great to be out and about in the warm weather and away from the designing and essay writing for a few days.