Penultimate course at West Dean - monoprinting

The monoprinting course was a slightly longer course - three day - structured around a technical introduction in the morning and then a day of applying these with the occasional technical session in the afternoon. The first couple of sessions introduced water based inks and the last two days we worked with oil based inks.

The course pushed us to bring in some rigour to our work - the very first session was a test of how pure a line we could achieve. Here are some examples of these lines:

And then some line drawings based on a photograph of biloba leaves. Here is the templates, which is a transparency from the photograph.

 

A print onto a background primed transfer of ink in grey. I modified the black ink throughout as I find it a bit harsh and the prints are quite soft.

 

Here the background was a wet monoprint with suggestions of the leaves in blue-grey tones and then the print of the leaves over this; below a detail. You can see that the edge is dark: this has come about as I left finger marks on the edge when I was holding down the paper (A4 paper on an A4 plate does not leave much for taping down the paper. I therefor used this device as a frame which has worked out quite well. The lines are quite bold and strong, perhaps a bit too think for the lacy effect of the composition.

 

We also learned to print using organic materials such as leaves and interesting when these soft leaves stick onto the brayer they can be used to transfer ink onto a piece of paper, such as below. I am not sure whether this appeals to me - firstly I thought the leaves I used were too precise and sharp and secondly in transferring the leaf imprint I think the results are a bit too much like 'wall paper' and I think that would need some further exploration to use in interesting ways.

 

 

A detail:

 

I also tried some grasses but these ended up sticking to the brayer for some time and left a lot of organic debris behind that made a mess and left disturbances in subsequent prints. Clearly one has to clean brayers well if using organic matter in this way.

 

 

 

Here's a detail from a better print using small leaves on blue loktah paper. In fact I printed on different papers to see how they worked, including cartridge, pastel and loktah paper. I think this latter paper was quite interesting in prints where the ink was dark and dense enough to bring up the print. A few examples left the ink too thin to show up properly and mark were faint and washed out.

 

This example of a print using the small leaves is on newsprint, unfortunate as the print is quite a subtle and soft result.

I also made a series of prints based on cathedral arches, which I will include  when I have photographed it.

 

Tapestry weaving again

Although I am working on various things in the studio, I am currently veering towards tapestry weaving at the moment. It has been the main occupation of mine this winter, partly because I decided to submit something for an exhibition and partly because I just enjoy working in this way.

Tapestry weaving is tremendously stimulating, whether you spend a great deal of time designing or whether you think about the process as you build up the work through weaving. In the autumn I  went on a short course led by Fiona Hutchison which was very good for running through various techniques and introducing ways of thinking about tapestry weaving from a process perspective.

During that weekend I made two samples. One was an assembly of smaller elements each introducing a technique. A very useful way to explore colour and the way various yarns and fibre work together:

 

The warp was a multi-coloured cotton crepe, quite thin, so that I had to consider how dense to make the weft. I should say here that I am not a purist in terms of weft threads. It could be said that tapestry weaving needs to be woven using a smooth worsted wool or mohair (or some other non-elastic and tightly spun yarn) or perhaps a nettle yarn, and then only use these fibres throughout to gain a uniform work. I think this is an approach following in the tradition of gobelin weaving, however I feel closer to the experimentalists of recent decades who tested scale, texture and process.

 

So, I am less concerned about the purity of the weft: whether using weaving or knitting wool, synthetic novelty yarns, metallic or lurex or different types of braiding yarns, they can all contribute something to the texture of the weaving, and affect the way the light is reflected from the structure. I once found work by a Baltic tapestry weaver on the Web who was equally liberal in her use of different weft yarns and she made very large-scale works that looked quite spectacular. Using various different yarns in the weft does present its own problems: you have to look at how thick the different combinations of yarn work together, and I learnt on the course that hand-spun yarns may require more packing (probably because they can be loosely spun, but that depends on the original purpose of the yarn). Basically it would be difficult to achieve a smooth even surface with mixed fibre wefts. I usually combine knitting yarn with firmer yarns, linen, cotton and denser wools and this works OK. I am also exploring  the possibilities of showing warp in the weave. This is something Scandinavian weavers do well, and if work was done on a very large scale the warp could potentially become a dimension of the final fabric object.

 

The second sample was using a single technique I had wanted to try for some time:



 

This is a way of creating texture building up sections that project over each other. I really liked this and can see some good potential for future works.

 

The sample was quite robust. Weaving loosely would not work in this case as you need to build up the weft to force the warps to space out. So I wove this using fairly thick weft elements and that feels quite good too, as in this case I could work out colour mixes along the way.

 

 

Over the Christmas holiday

 

I mentioned that I have been working on something that would be submitted to be assessed for an exhibition. This work was something I worked on most of the holiday this winter and I have now submitted it. I can provide a brief glimpse of it here, and will add pictures of the final thing once I know whether it has been accepted:

 

 

The wooden block with the weaving is one of two pieces that together make a 3D work I have called Crab Apple in Green and White. There is quite a lot of wrapping going on, and as my work concerns itself with nature and the notion of the organic there are suggestions of branches, twigs and growth. This has been quite a fun thing to work on as the format created constraints and I was able to work in a looser way with the weft to think about the way the relationship with how the warp sat on the blocks would work. Overall it was a satisfying work and I think the final dynamic between the blocks and the synthesis of the weavings is coherent.

 

 

West Dean FDAD - A drawing course

I have decided that I need a different way of learning art and design, so have booked onto the Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at West Dean College. This means I need to do 10 short courses over a maximum of 2 years and write a short essay at the end. It starts with an introduction to creative/experimental/expressive drawing, and I have then chosen a number of textile and drawing courses over the next few months.

The introductory course led by the painter Frances Hacth and the print maker Dale Devereux Barker started on Friday evening with a group project. We were asked to react to music using first drawing materials and then large pots of paint, mainly emulsion, splashed all over the paper as we walked around the strips and then had our mark-making implements given and exchanged as we went along.

This is what we made, a lot of paint in layers sometimes mixed, with bits of paper and wool stuck to the surface:

The next day we had a session thinking about our anticipations for the course and then went on to work with different art materials and in various media to introduce us to the possibilities of drawing.

The first exercise was to work on a large piece of paper using ink, applied using natural materials we would find in the garden near the tree we were asked to select and draw. The final drawings were then set up so we could discuss the work, and some had included drawings in sketchbooks which were also compared:

My drawing is the one on the far left in the above picture, and my sketchbook drawing is the one in the middle top in the picture below.

This was a very enjoyable and freeing exercise. I used some twigs I found and a couple of leaves. These left either loose line type of marks and the leaves could apply more ink and could be ground into the paper which gave the marks a more earthy substance.

Other exercises we did on the second day was a discussion of our hopes for the course, including pulling out 5 words that reflected this from newspapers to glue into our sketchbooks, and further drawing exercises.

The theme for the day was 'growth' as felt through contact with trees and natural things. We were each given a small seed pod or nut and were asked to draw it to a large scale using chalk and charcoal on black sugar paper, assuming a light source from the top left hand corner, we used a slice of bread as a rubber having dusted the paper with chalk first. I drew a walnut, which was fairly successful:

We were then asked to break open our seed pod or nut and draw directly on top of our previous drawing the inside of the object:

I didn't like this drawing much, but in hindsight I think that it was probably better than I felt it was at the time. I made the mistake of not stepping back and looking at it from a distance. Large drawings need to have a bit of distance. When I am at home I sometimes just leave the work for a while and return to it, which is not possible on a course. So I in fact I cut my drawing up into smaller pieces:

As the days progressed, our work was attached to the wall to add to the feeling of development and growth:

Then there was a compositional exercise using a grid as below and selecting 8 pieces from the large floor piece we cut these out and glued them into individual compositions in our sketchbooks. The below shows the squares I selected before they were glued in:

A further development included choosing one of the 8 squares and blowing it up into a drawing using charcoal and chalk on white paper:

The last exercise using the painted lining paper was a sculpture type challenge, to somehow build a sculpture using the park as a backdrop. I chose to use the paper in rolled shapes, wanting to keep things simple. In the end the final 'sculpture' looked a bit like something Frank Gehry might have considered - someone talked about Scandinavian simplicity, but actually I was more worried about making a mess of crumpled shapeless paper. Smooth paper and its defined edges can make interesting shapes when rolled and placed in relation to each other, which was what I tried to do. There were two horizontal planes a vertical 'tower' type structure.

I chose to use the holes that were already in the paper, only ripping one section to enable bits to be joined:

And from this three dimensional work we then had to do some small, very short (1 min), drawing exercises on the grid we had been given. I did not enjoy this exercise very much. I got out of synch with the timing of every timed drawing and there was very little time to both select, look and draw a reasonable sketch before the time was up.

There was also a basic colour theory session where Frances Hatch demonstrated colour mixing using water colours, discussing qualities of paint, granulation, and so on. This was a very useful exercise and she suggested we might want to do colour mix studies on cold, wet days when we couldn't go out to draw (she is a plein air artist).

She also shared how she uses her colour mixes by laminating the ones she want to take out with her when drawing or painting - a very handy tip:

On the last day we got a short lecture on themes and topics that artist might choose, including examples by various artists to show some of the wide span of styles and expressions possible.

And a couple of last exercises drew the course to and end. First a lump of clay was to be shaped into something that resonnated with a word, in this case 'energetic':

And an exploratory exercise to respond in drawing what came to mind from feeling an object hidden in a paper bag. I quite enjoyed this exercise. It was free, and I think it would be useful as a warm-up thing to do, or to just get into the swing of things, but one might need someone else to choose an object so that there is no pre-arranged mental image of the thing before you start the drawing.

My object was a bull-clip, with a largeish smooth section and sharper edges, and then wiry metal strips attached with compressed small areas on the smooth section:

And that was the weekend - a good grounding in various techniques, some of which I think will be very handy when I look at my own work looking ahead.

Sketchbook - 3rd part

In the last section of the sketchbook course the challenge is to think about the work of an artist chosen from a list of various artists who work in textiles or in sculpture, including Caroline Broadhead, Eva Hesse and Suzumi Noda. I chose to look at the latter two.

Noda is a director of an art school in Osaka, but is also an artist practitioner with a keen sense of the changing ecology of the world, hence her interest in recycling materials.

There was not a great deal to find on Suzumi Noda, although I thought her work was interesting - using knitting and integrating discarded materials into it, including old bottle tops. She contributed some works to the Lost in Lace exhibition with a work made up of old cardboard jacquard cards and fine wire. She knits garments in an open structure. Although she states she used to use wool in the 1980s, her material now looks like a monofilament or wire. So, her language is about open work and lacy-ness with an awareness of contemporary environmental changes - I am not sure how she works her design process as I can't find any sketchbook images of her work, however you get a sense that she has a very good handle on the craft of textiles, whether knitting or knotting or some other method of assembly (I found an image of a chair she had covered in a very three-dimensional way with tags and a bright yellow monofilament, which she had also used in knitted installations).

Eva Hesse, on the other hand, has been well examined by art historians and crafts theorists. A sculptor who worked in the 1960s using new materials in her work such as latex painted on rope or canvas, and the structure then left to slum or hang, Hesse let gravity pull the work into/out of shape, or let ropes get tangled and knotted over which she then painted these in resin.

Hesse’s work has been described by some as post-minimalist, or Process Art (Adamson, 2007), which considered the process of making, in materials and letting the work do its own work, such as letting the works slump, hang, fold, balance. She also made drawings in the early 1960s, which were simple abstracts, using elemental forms such as the circle and the rectangle to absorb her marks.

Instead of choosing just a single artist I thought I might combine these two - Noda from the knitting perspective, as I have several yarns cut in short bits left over from the tapestry sample in assignment 4 I need to use up, as well as yarns I dug out from my stash, and Hesse because of her attention to process. I am less enamoured by Hesse's final art objects - if her work really was about process then these objects demonstrate that it was not the final thing that was important to her in itself, but a way to show the making of it within the object. There is a suggestion that she had said she was working to create 'nothing' (Sussman, 2006), which is probably suggestive. That nothing might be the liminal space between an art object that traditionally communicates something and the space and activities of the making of it.

In any case, the sketchbook course asks us to consider these artists and materials we may have collected that could be used. I have collected tissue papers from wrapped parcels and shoe boxes, and I also have a small bundle of other paper that could be usefully dyed. So I went on to dunk and dip some of the tissue paper in a solution of water-soaked onion peel, which gave a yellow colour, and applied these papers to the heavier sheets and also dyed a small piece of silk. I also knitted some small samples into which I knitted bits of warp yarn.

I sat for a few evenings just knitting small square samples in linen, wool and cotton, sometimes handspun, sometimes commercial. Amazingly, I found myself knitting pretty monochrome samples, unusual for me, as I usually work with colour. These samples at times incorporated some of the off-cut warp yarns I mentioned earlier. Also unusually, I knitted samples, just made up smallish pieces to see how the material worked. Normally I would plan a knitting project, skip the bit where you are meant to make a swatch or sample and just get on with the final thing. This means many failed trials and re-trials or projects left unfinished.  In this instance, as this sketchbook work is a way to understand how a work book can almost be its own thing, stand as a record of the process, there was no compelling reason for working towards a final object.

Here are some of the pieces of paper onto which I have mounted some of the knitting. The dark brown sheet of paper on the left was saturated in tea, whilst on the right the sheet was jabbed and 'painted' with the tea bag. In the middle is a sheet saturated with the onion skin water, which on this paper went a strange pink, whilst on the white tissue paper the stains was bright yellow:

I also had a white paper bag which I have opened out and started to dismantle. The rolled paper handles where platted together into a sort of 3D cord, and I tied short linen pieces to the final sample to make it hairy:

Also being shown here (above) is a knitted sample made with a wool-silk plied homespun yarn, where I unravelled two stitches in the centre and sewed it onto a tea stained paper. 

I also prepared more paper using paint (mainly gesso with glue and a bit of paint added), sticking yarns and onion-dyed paper to some. Some sheets of paper I had folded with quite hard folds and then opened out, and onto the peaks from the folds I poured a very strong dark tea solution onto the peak and let the tea pour down into the valleys. This left some fainter brown stains and some very dark stains on the paper, I was very pleased with the result and will try a few more.

Here are some more of the papers I worked using gesso, glue, water colour and yarn bits.

You can see some of the knitted samples using the remnants of the warp yarn from a previous assignment, another two samples knitted in hemp - the one on the left a single which I bought from a woman who imports these yarns from women's collectives in India, and the one on the bottom is a plied rough linen yarn which I knitted in a twisted stitch that has created a quite dense and less flexible fabric than a normal straight stitch knit.

Also in the box are some paper craft balls I wrapped in yarn with stitching or sisal knotted over it. I have also put in the braids and plaits so they won't get lost and I am putting in the three green yarn wraps I have made for the final tapestry sample, again to prevent them from being lost. I hope it all gets to the tutor without being too damaged in the post when I submit it.

 You see here the three wraps and two large, two small balls covered in yarn and stitched.

This piece of paper is the one mentioned using tea poured over the folds and letting it pool and left to air dry. The marks are denser and very loose, discontinuous yet create a whole on the paper, I liked this first sample for its simplicity - very unlike other things I have done before.

As I quite like the various papers I have prepared as they are, with or without knitted samples attached, and as the back of the papers deserve equal attention as the front I decided that joining the sheets together would not be helpful. So I made a box, currently without a lid, with a core of card and covered in a recycled postal bag from Japan (see the post on Japanese tapestry). I am satisfied the box works. Somehow the size of the card I had left was exactly the right size, and in folding over the paper it has been possible to make a good fit, it just needed four diagonal cuts in the paper to enable the corners to be folded in neatly. The smaller papers will move around inside the box, but there is also space for the more 3D stringy platted cords I made of left-over materials.

 I also made a lid for the box - this took two goes, as I got the sizing wrong on the first attempt - and in fact I also made a mistake on the second attempt but that is not so visible. Overall I am happy with the box. This is the first time I make one from scratch, I didn't consult any books or web-sites, just had a go ironing the paper flat and then folding it into shape. And it is now a functional box! 

References

Adamson, Glenn, Thinking through Craft, Berg, 2007

Sussman, Elizabeth, Eva Hesse: Sculpture (Jewish Museum), Yale University Press, 2006

Reflections on feedback received

The OCA asks us to show how we may have reflected or acted on feedback received from our tutor. I thought that rather than pasting all the feedback in from all assignments, I would comment on the feedback elements that had substantive contents, so that I can work out whether these will be useful for the last assignment.
 
Feedback from assignment 1-3
 
Overall I think the feedback I get is positive. Tutors (I have had two on this course), have commented that my commitment is coherent, that I choose good exhibitions etc to visit and that my learning log is consistent and clearly laid out.
 
My work is' thorough' one said, and I have worked experimentally on samples. Connections between my own work and that of other artists was given favourable comment, and I get a feeling that my work style and process is OK.
 
Tutor 
you have used drawing to explore photographs as a way of generating design ideas.  This is an excellent way of working and I encourage you to continue to develop this method of working.

On the learning log - one tutor said I was using an academic style, the other said that it is 'articulate and reflective in a loose functional style'. So, not sure what to make of this. One also said that I should spend more on my practice and less on writing, while the other said that I should include all my information from the workbook, and to describe my work more fully. Well, this is a finely balanced thing. I have throughout stated that I will not put any images on the blog that carry risks of breaching copyright, I will be placing links to other people's work instead. And in terms of describing my work, I find this a difficult thing to balance - the blog takes a lot of time to complete, it is a slower process to write than to talk, which is a short-coming of not having face to face tutorials with the work in the room to discuss with a tutor. 

Learning points

In assignment two the advisory pointers included:

Explore a theme, create mind maps and observational drawings to respond to through your assignment work.

Further, from assignment three:

●     Continue to work experimentally with your materials

●     Maintain the development of your online learning log

●     Draw and mark make regularly in a personal sketchbook

●     Consider doing a section of the Foundations for Textiles Course.

For my second assignment I also got some surprising feedback - The tutor thought I hadn't machine stitched into soluble fabric to create new fabric before. I am not sure what made her say that, I had used that technique for my textiles A-level (the final exam piece she had seen in a separate email), and she also suggested I might stitch into my final printed sample, which I had done. Of course she had not seen the final sample, but I am sure I had explained this about the piece in the blog. 

Further:

Tutor:1

You have mentioned that you’d like more time creating the work; perhaps this is worth considering? I’d like to see you extending your pieces, when something has gone well, recreating and extending it whilst neglecting what was no so positive about a piece until you have reworked a piece several times with reflections at each stage. 

 

Tutor2

I suggest you explore the colour you use for your samples in more methodical way by creating colour palettes.  Use either paints or a computer programme like Photoshop to make colour chips arranged in suitable palettes.

 

On the final learning points and advice on artist's work to consult provided - this is a funny one. Some of this advice relates to a given assignment and is given in retrospect, and once one is entering another assignment when the feedback arrives from a previous assignment the skill set being tested has changed or may warrant a different approach.

And, not surprisingly, both tutors encouraged drawing more. I do agree with this, but the issue is two-fold - time and skill. I have a busy job and am tired when I get home. I have had some lulls in the course work for that reason, and find that when I get home and work on samples there is little time for additional work on drawing. Hence I voluntarily asked for, and was advised to do, the sketchbook work as I thought that might inspire me further. I will probably do the drawing course after this one to gain in confidence with my drawing skills.

A course in acid dyeing

I organised a course in acid dyeing by Martin Weatherhead for my Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers which ran over a 2 day period. The aim of the course was to create a colour card of carefully calculated gradations and mixes of colours. If there was time left over we would then be able to dye, and aim to colour match something - I suppose in case of any future projects that need a particular colour scheme. I went on the course so that I know how to be systematic about dyeing, but I know that deep down I am more experimental and will try out things that will not be repeatable, and so just use whatever is at hand when that day come for a project to be developed. This is mainly because I work with materials over representational work. Colour matching is something one might aim to do once a specific project is defined using particular colours.

This was a terribly busy course - the first day we managed to dye most of the samples, with the second day devoted to mixes to get browns and shades of green. I think we probably worked at speed and accuracy suffered somewhat, we ran out of wool and vinegar, and on the second day the wool was barely wetted properly so the uptake of dye was a bit uneven in places.

So what did we learn?

• Wetting wool with warm water and a bit of soap for 20 mins or longer enables uptake of dye
• Water, dye solution to a particular dilution, vinegar is heated with the wool, stirring at the beginning to enable even distribution of dye onto the wool (or other protein fibre)
• Dye solutions can be calculated and mixed to enable any colour needed to be dyed (apart from black and white), mainly using the primaries, violet
• Leave the dye bath to heat up to boiling point, then turn off the heat source and leave to cool naturally, as the dye apparently takes optimally at 80 degrees and it spends more time going through the right temperatures on the cooling phase
• Keep records meticulously and accurately - if you want to reproduce the colours in the future
• Don't hurry these steps otherwise you may not get the results you need(!)

 

Dye baths on the second day, a red-range with small amounts of turquoise (left) and blue (right)

 

 

Dyed wools drying an approximate colour order

 

On the second day the skeins were wound into balls in preparation for cutting into short sections for our colour cards

 

I was not planning on doing this course, but am glad I did. It taught me a few things that will be useful when I come to dye my own yarns for some future projects.

 

The final shade card looks quite good:

 

 

 

And now to the admission of a horrible mistake I made. I was not feeling well on the second day - had a terrible headache and quite frankly could not think straight. When I got home I thought I better give the yarn another rinse, as the vinegar could make the wool brittle. So I put all my yarns into the washing machine in pillow cases and put the machine on the rinse programme with extra rinse - well, what can I say?! the wool felted and the whole bunch came out in various levels of fulling, apart from the silk, and the superwashed wool.

 

Here's the dreadful pile of yarn:

 

 

The green and pink wool is quite felted and the wool has shrunk in all skeins. In the case of the green that is not really a bad thing, as the wool was quite loosely plied before fulling. Now it is a denser yarn and will be better for tapestry weaving, although it does have a hairy surface. The wool-silk ply has fared worse though. I wanted those skeins to be smooth and that is no longer possible, the wool shrunk and the silk had stayed as it is, making the yarn more fluffy. I had dyed some a pale coral red to go into the shell tapestry, I will need to see how this works when I blend it.

 

So what did I learn there? - not to make radical decisions when unwell, and certainly not any decision that suggests an easy short-cut when it plainly will not work. I know how wool behaves quite well, and this issue could have easily been prevented. Nevertheless the wool is still usable, so all is not completely lost.

 

Tapestry weaving workshop with Weftfaced

This weekend I went on a workshop with Caron Penney and Katherine Swailes. They are, or have been, tapestry weavers at West Dean College, and make work in their own right. This workshop was a mixed ability class, and there were people there who had never woven before and other who had woven for many years.

The course was run in Arundel museum, many miles from where I live, and it took two hours to get there, over rolling hills, along fast roads and through pretty villages. Hampshire is so very English in its landscape - hedgerows, woodland and arable fields. It was a very enjoyable trip. I listened to John Stein beck's The Pearl as an audiobook in the car. It is a great story, I read it when I was a teenage, enjoyed it then, and it is gripping, touching and true throughout the terrible tale it is telling.

Anyway, the class was split in two depending on what we wanted to learn: Penney was introducing tapestry weaving to newcomers and spoke on blending and interpretation of designs. Swailes works intuitively and experimentally with materials, which is the way I am inclined, so I joined that set to learn some new techniques, working on the surface of the tapestry. Katherine Swailes showed some samples she had made. In one case she had placed black wax behind a small piece and heated it with an iron to make the wax melt into the fibre, and oil had then seeped fro mthe wax wider into the tapestry creating a dark halo effect. She had also done the same with another sample, but instead of ironing it she had zapped the piece in the microwave for a minute which had melted the wax onto the back of the piece and burnished the fibre around it. That was quite effective, the burned fibre was tonally darker but blended well with the unburned base fibre.

 

A table of reference material - a book on Coptic tapestry, Katherine Swailes' samples, a frame loom with samples in progress for demonstrating technique.

It seemed to me both of them work with very simple motifs, paring designs down, down to elemental shapes - whether geometric shapes in Caron's case or working with the structure of weaving techniques in Katherine's case. There were a number of techniques to learn, including creating loops on the surface, carrying over floating wefts and weaving some of these as crosses.

 

I decided to use the day to practice some of these techniques to learn them properly and have a record of these. Since my work on this course is moving into trees I chose to work with greens. Hence the foundation fibre was a blend of pale green, thin wool and a white linen (I love this linen, it is from Texere Yarn, I have some at home and look at it longingly from time to time, waiting for  project to come along when I can use it). To keep things easy I went for a 50-50 mix of these, with the exception of a centre section where I reduced the green and added a linen strand to create a contrast to the loops which became tufts of bright greens.

 

Here's the sample:

 

From the bottom - crosses of floating wefts, loops cut open to create tufts, wefts carried over in greens and gold, and the top elements started as random vertically inclined wefts. This last element was not terribly successful, so when I got home I added to the padded nature and randomness by embroidering strands over it. On the photograph you can't see the green wool in the background very well, but it was there to balance the whole. I liked that, it softened the pure white. One person did weave with a pure white slightly heavier weft and the beads (the bumps of weft lying on the warps) cast bluish-grey shadows across her sample. Katherine thought the tufts were an 'explosion'. I liked that, I wanted some drama in the thing, so often samples are just a flat record, but here I was striving to create a 'nice' sample, so that it would be a more pleasurable thing to refer to.