unleash the power of inspiration...

                                         unleash the power of inspiration...

Chesterfield        Red letter Day            Rossetti

I hope that you enjoy the photos - this month I've focused on how creative windows and window dispalys can be.


Please check back next month to find out what my latest fascination is.

See you next month      
Fiona xxxx

On-line, On-nine
Monthly post on the 9th of each month! 
On-line, On-nine  April 9th 2016

The other thing that has influenced my thinking regarding the back of sweater came from when I was designing commercial ready-to-wear knits and it became one of my top five pet peeves.  In ready–to-wear garments you often find beautiful patterning and attention to detail on the fronts of a garment and sometimes on the sleeves, but as a cost cutting exercise the backs are made plain.  In the industry these can sometimes be referred to as “coffin sweaters”…nobody sees the back.  But for those of us who are hand knitting a sweater we are making a couture piece, which has nothing at all to do with cheap manufacturing processes.

The back is a great place to put intricate or large scale patterning because it is an uninterrupted flat area, unlike most ladies fronts, where our curves can cause distortion to the patterning to happen.

So having details, or at least some design consideration about what happens on the back, has become a signature for me. This has, in turn, become where I start when working on most of my design concepts. I then draw smaller elements or details from the patterning for use on the fronts and sleeves.

You can see this in many of my designs....such as these 

pictures right - all from 2015
 
I expect that this is also going to be a very important

consideration for my future work....so watch this space!

LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD


Have you noticed how every artist or craftsperson has a signature style, or something incorporated into their work that makes it uniquely theirs—a significant style or element? It might be a musician’s chord progression, a dancers arm movement, or a painter’s colour palette. 

Over the past little while I have been inspired by some new ideas, finding myself wanting to find more time to explore and develop them. But other projects have just kept getting in the way. I have now carved out some time in my schedule so that I can do some serious designing. As I started out on this adventure I decided that I would make some notes on how I have approached my designing up to this point. This proved to be quite illuminating. It has allowed me to come up with a set of “principles” as it were.  I was surprised just how strongly I felt about some of these – they are my “deal breakers”. Without incorporating these concepts I feel like I am somehow slacking, making things simple as a cop-out (rather than simplification for elegance). And the resultant work ends up not feeling like mine somehow.

One of these deal-breakers is how I approach the back of the garment. I used to design in woven fabric and on a couple of occasions designed wedding gowns. For these projects I would begin by thinking about the back of the gown. My main reason for this is, when the bride is standing in front of her family and friends making her vows she often has her back to them. And who wants to look at a zipper running down the back of her dress?  How uninspiring at such a special moment – more about function than aesthetics. I am, of course, not alone in hiding closures in the side seams or using decorative buttoning for these kind of special projects. I’m not professing being original in my thinking on this, but it has certainly influenced my current work.