Personal Project/Oblique Stratergies

My initial ideas for my personal project changed quite dramatically as the weeks progressed throughout this unit. My initial idea was to create freeform crocheted shapes inspired by natural forms using reclaimed yarns, following feedback from my Pecha Kucha presentation I looked at creating freeform crochet shapes using items of clothing from my family and friends ; I wanted to create a piece of work directly inspired by my friends and family and direct environment. I was slow to start on this project and became side tracked by my Home project and the subsequent Body project. My personal project remained untouched.. During the Body project I became inspired by elastic properties of yarn and started to spin fibres around shearing elastic (core spinning) to create a springy yarn .

I wanted to develop my core spinning skills. Outcome an amount of very soft springy yarn but what next ……. what to do with it ???

Core spun yarn

I attended a group tutorial, the tutorial looked at using Oblique Strategies to move work forward, we picked a strategy card at random my card was MUTE and CONTINUE how could I use this ??

I gave this a lot of thought …. I looked at how I could mute the yarn ,

Could I remove the colour bleaching the yarn ?

Photographing it and then putting the image into black and white ?

I looked at how the yarn , I decided it is the texture of the yarn that informed the narrative of the yarn. How could I silence the yarn ? I wanted to remove the texture, at New Designers Show in Islington I had seen very small pieces of textiles placed in casting resin (very similar to a paper weight )and thought this was very interesting.

I didn’t have casting resin but had standard fibreglass so started to experiment with covering my hand spun yarn with fibreglass.

Hand spun yarn covered in fibreglass

This worked well on a small scale, could I make bigger pieces ?…

I knitted the yarn into rectangles and attached the knitted pieces to a wooden backing, creating a frame using nails to stretch the knitting. Fibreglass was poured over the knitting.