Creating Cloth

For Opus this week I've progressed from crazy patchwork to creating a cloth using other methods. I wanted to keep the idea of piecing together different materials whilst trying to retain the drape and fluidity of cloth. Some attempts have been more successful than others. First I wanted to piece together metals taking inspiration from the 1960's creations of Paco Rabanne and the wonderful fluid sculptures of El Anatsui. I machine stitched some more tomato puree tubes together which were quite drapey.



I then took some slightly larger pieces of metal which I coloured with spirit dyes, punched holes and tied together with linen string - even more drapey!

But my favourite metal sample was this piece made from washers and copper wire. This was incredibly fluid and moved beautifully. It has certainly opened my mind as to what might be considered a cloth.

I then experimented a little and wove and stitched some paper strips, which were folded magazine pages. This was not a very fluid cloth but had quite a nice "textile" feel about it.

I tied together lumps of slate which were very drapey and interesting but I couldn't quite think of this as cloth.

And finally I thought I would play with laurel leaves and stitched together with thorns in the style of Andy Goldsworthy and I came up with this which I loved. I would like to make a large one of these to hang from a tree in the garden.

I was told by my tutor to be experimental and take risks so I hope this fits the bill! I'll know tomorrow evening.

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Oh... by the way... did I mention I've got an Etsy shop now!!!