I have decided that I need to have a purpose to my work, so I am following (very loosely) the city & guilds syllabus for machine embroidery with a view to actually doing the course in a year or two.
My theme or purpose in my study is outlined in my portfolio introduction:
Machine embroidery and indeed all embroidery has its basis in the element of line. Embroidery uses as it’s medium an actual, physical line which defines and creates the other design elements of shape, space, texture, form, tone and colour. In this project in two parts exploring machine embroidery in textile art, my theme centres around the natural flows and crystalline structures of matter. In this theme, line will have precedence over other elements, however I will use all of the other elements and principles of art to develop depth in the work.
My initial inspirations came from two references in Textile magazine (vol 4 no 100 2010) on natural flow patterns and lace in fashion. My intent is to concentrate on natual flows as inspiration in the first phase of the work and to expand into crystalline structure, with its links to lace and nets, webs as second stage of research.
The first stage is to look into the theory of line and I have done abrief overview and hope to work up the sample tomorrow. I also have used flow inspiration to design six patterns which will be next on my work up list. Here is my outline of the types of line I will produce for my first sampler.
