My names Claire Roberts I study Textile Design For Fashion at Manchester Metropolitan University! I am currently in my 2ND year, & I'm documenting my current project in the hope some wonderful person will be interested by my work & rescue me from the delights of a life-time in Grimsby! Here's a brief insight into my project!
TD4F Level 2
Assimilation and Testing – Spring / Summer Terms 2008
Introduction
The aim of this project is to produce a design collection or outcome and then to test its quality by placing it in a situation where people outside the university and (preferably) inside the fashion business can interact with it. This might be via a website or web space, some form of work experience, putting your work on sale or an exhibition, show or screening. The process of how you might go about this is important too – for example, putting a portfolio together, or the design and layout of a promotional magazine or package.
The project is extremely open which has it's pro's & con's as you can imagine! First of all i would just like to share with you some of my initial inspirations!! I decided rather than to follow a set path, i would just look at artists/designers that interested me to generate some ideas! One being Marian Bijlenga, I've given you a short insight of what she's about below.
Marian Bijlenga uses textiles in her work - cotton, paper and horsehair, for example - but the application of the textile itself is not her main goal. The suppleness of the material enables her to discover new forms, transparent patterns and complex closed shapes. Structure is the constant factor. In her earlier work she developed structures resembling written symbols, like handwriting, calligraphy and Chinese characters. Her later work draws inspiration from shapes found in nature: streams, spirals and leaves.
Over the years Bijlenga has developed her own technique, and she uses materials that are generally unfamiliar in the textile world. Before the 1990s she constructed spatial drawings with fabric thread - spatial, because the pieces, fixed with dressmaker's pins, are slightly removed from the wall or surface so that they seem to have a floating quality. These 'drawings' consist of pieces of coloured fabric fixed with glue. However, these proved to be fragile and vulnerable, so Marian looked around for a material with a greater natural stiffness. Horsehair from horses' tails turned out to be the ideal material. It enables her to simultaneously construct dense complex patterns and transparent, open structures. Although these later pieces are strong and resistant, they still give the appearance of fragility.
