Stage 4 - A final Sample

I decided to base my final piece around this piece by Monet simply because I liked the combination of colours. After a bit of fiddling with paint and crayons I decided to focus on the far right of the picture and just use a very small section as the source as I felt it worked better that way. Below is my final piece with the yarn winding and my colour planning. I carried the plan everywhere with my and ended up finishing the sample on a train to Edinburgh, hence the coffee stains! 

Did you have enough variety in your collection of yarns and other materials? Which kind of yarns etc did you use the most? How do their characteristics affect the look and feel of each sample? 

I think by the end of this part of the course I had collected enough yarns and materials to use for weaving and was no longer particularly limited by it. I personally preferred to just use standard weight yarn in a variety of different colours. I also used a lot of embroidery floss. I did find that I preferred the thinner yarns as they concealed the warp better where as thicker ones left is exposed. I really liked playing with the rug making techniques and loved the way the outcome felt. I can see myself using that again. 

How did you find weaving in comparison to the other techniques you've tried? Did you find it slow or too limiting?

At first I found it frustrating and slow but as I did more I found my own way of working and got much quicker. I really didn't think I would enjoy it but it may be my favourite technique so far! I don't think there are many limitations and I'd like to try combining it with other disciplines such as stitch and printing to create more unusual effects. 

How do you feel about your finished sample? Are you happy with the relationship of textures proportions colour and pattern to the finished size? Is there any part that you would want to change? If so try to identify how and why you would change it?

I'm actually rather happy with my finished sample. I really like the way it looks. I spent most of my time concentrating on colour and proportion. I chose a small section from the right hand side of the painting on and think the result was quite good. However I think there is far too much brown in my sample than in the painting. 

The piece isn't perfect but it's the first piece of work I've produced so far that I really like and feel happy with so I don't think I would change anything. It may be interesting though to reproduce the sample but to block all the colours together instead of alternating and focus on using more textual yarns. 

Was there any stage in the whole design process that you felt went wrong? How would you tackle this process differently another time?

I actually liked the way the design process was so thought out and planned. It meant that the work turned out pretty much as I had expected which is not often the case with printing and other such techniques. I think next time I should use a loom bigger than I think I need so that I have extra space. I found that i was very conscious of getting close to the end and needing to keep the work exactly as I had planned instead of doing what felt instinctive. 

Which did you enjoy more- working from the source material or putting colours together intuitively?

I actually really enjoyed both for different reasons. I think putting together colours intuitively was very helpful for the final sample but I do like to create something that is something as opposed to just a random piece. For this reason I think I prefer working from source material. I look forward to creating less abstract weaving work in the future.