Disaster Strikes. Plans for the Future of the Project.

Changes to the model I want to make in the future. For the moment, it is pinned together, until I have entirely finished the decoration, when I will glue and sew it.

Today, I am putting everything together to submit it to my tutor, but there's something missing. I had hoped to be able to put the dome together, and have the structure covered when it went into the box, but I was too hasty. My plan was to make a dome from clear vinyl, and to decorate it with a retreating city skyline made from several layers of organza, so as to give the effect of mist or smog over a city. However, to make sure that the organza was durable enough, I decided to draw out paper patterns of the skyline I hoped to cut out, complete with windows, etc., and to glue down the organza to a piece of vinyl a few centimetres larger than the pattern. This technique I had already proved could work by making the weeds for the riverbed in the same way. Once it had entirely dried, I could unobtrusively pin the paper to it and cut it out with a scalpel. However, I then made my mistake. To construct the seams of the dome, I plan to use some invisible mending thread to machine the layers down - this thread is made in a kind of clear plastic, and not meant for use with a machine, but through some perseverance, I got a bobbinful to wind, and by putting down the feed teeth and changing the tension, I could move the material myself to get a fairly regular stitch. The mistake came when I decided that I wanted to keep the skyline free of such obtrusive stitching, and merely glue again. I prepared a large section of the floor in a back room with folded draping calico, and glued everything to the body of the dome. I covered it carefully with tinfoil, thinking it less likely to stick to leaking glue than clingfilm, and stacked up some encyclopaedias on top. A few days later, I picked up the books, and what do you know? The vinyl had made the centre of the shapes entirely airtight - and I had somehow completely dismissed that as a possibility. I sadly peeled them away, and in less than an hour after pegging them up to dry, they were finished. I cleaned the dome as best I could, but it has taken on a mottled appearance over the whole shape, and is, I fear, un-salvageable. The organza shapes, meanwhile, having been glued and dried twice, have shrunk away from their vinyl backing, making the surface crumpled, and full of air pockets. Luckily, both of these materials are relatively cheap, and most of the templates have survived. Unluckily, this will have to wait until after my assignment submission to go ahead, as the materials must be ordered. An A2 plan of the layout accompanies my submission.


Other things I want to include in time for assessment:

1. Add some more diverse colours - with leftover grey felt scraps applied to flints, 
2. a fine wire weathervane for the top of the spire, hopefully in a pretty jewellery wire gauge,
3. add a path, maybe gravestones, and a gate to the church courtyard,  the gate hopefully made in a scrolling ironwork style, as long as it is possible to source a narrow enough wire-edged ribbon.
4. A touch of the Baroque by adding some quarter-circle shaped crochet fans to stepped house front, as many houses in Amsterdam seem to have.
5. Make some railings for the waterside edge of the courtyard, 
6. Add some street level arches to the front of the townhouse, which currently has no official door!
7. And add a final all-round 'wrapper' to bottom of base, on the outside of the dome, to mimic the traditional wooden base to a Victorian dome display.

To sum up.
My motives in making this piece are not very complex. I made it because it combined some of my interests - Victoriana, the Low Countries, and textiles. I made it because it would allow me to build on some earlier sketchbook work I felt shouldn't be wasted, because it was an opportunity to have a clear goal, and challenges to replicate items that would test ingenuity. I made it because it presented a project that combined 3D and 2D decorative techniques, modelling, pattern cutting, and would give me a chance to practice all of them. It was more exploration than expression, which I don't think is a bad thing. It doesn't have anything particularly profound about it, and it doesn't have a great deal of deep thought behind it, but as a textile object, I think it's helped me to think about new techniques, ways to make new shapes, and well, ideas to build on in the future. Once the dome is complete, and stitched into place, I'll be reposting final pictures.

Part One of Design of Piece & Techniques Used.

As time became very short to complete this piece and meet my deadline, I began to write less and less - so here, by way of compensation, is part one of a combination piece - an exploration of what I have finished for my assignment completion date, how it was achieved, using which materials, and my plans for additions/polishing for it before it's assessment. My major disappointment during this section was my lack of time to create a nice folder of sketches and thoughts whilst the piece was in construction, as well as some more experimentation with it's composition. However, I challenged myself to meet my deadline without lowering my ambitions for a stand-out piece at the start of this section, and to some degree, I think I've achieved that aim. I went about this section in my own working way, and unfortunately that is using a very one-track mind. I make a decision, and stick to it - I don't question myself enough. This is why I often produce one-sided work, where I have been very keen to move from one technique to the next, from the sheer thrill of creating. I give myself little allotted time to reflect on work in progress, and plough onwards. So, let's analyse the piece, and the decisions behind it, without dwelling on the personality that makes it what it is.

Composition.
The arrangement of this piece was very much dictated by the scale - I had a set of techniques in mind, and wanted to make a more naturalistic scene than a study of a single building. I started off my design on A2 paper, thinking that a base any larger than the one I drew would be bordering on ludicrous. I drew a few views of the street, trying to imagine it in 3D space - I think it came together well, the only hiccup being when I measured and cut the holes for the tunnel/courtyard entrance and found they didn't make for a straight view through the building.

I had to make the base of the composition very thick, as well as wide, to be able to include a water layer and a suitable gap from the waterline to the pavement. I was also keen to make the tower of the church a little taller, to have about twice the height between the spire and pitched roof, but as it is already more than 40cm high, and the structure would become weaker with the addition of details not glued and slotted into the original skeleton, I decided to decorate as planned, and add a little cap to tidy things up at the top of the spire, hopefully drawing the eye up, and extending it's height. 

The Church Walls.
The walls of the church are very much based on some work from an earlier section of the course, where I machine stitched a series of architectural details over repeating paper designs, then tore away the paper, leaving (hopefully) a regular pattern quilted into felt-backed fabric. Though I had to hand-baste the edges of the windows back (these stitches later removed), and carefully edge them without shattering the beads with my machine's foot, the rest of the stitching went surprisingly smoothly. I left some parts unstitched, in order not to interfere with three decorative features. In the picture above, you can see a window section with a brick repair. This repair was made from the same fabric as is used for the house next to it - I again basted the fabric to the right shape, then carefully unravelled the weave to match. I took a sharp yarn needle and pulled the individual strands through the felt, then stitched them as flat as possible at the back. See next photo for detail.

I also wanted some pebble repairs - and reused the seed beads from the windows (taking out the brighter colours) to stitch an impression of a primitive fix. There are some 'flint' sections as well, which are simple appliqué of felt scraps. Also, in a couple of places, I've included some simply embroidered features like doors and shuttered windows. Notably, there is a clock face - more photos of this side further on - featuring seed beads as numbers, and bugles as hands.

Bricks.
Back of two brick sections - the loose ends neatly stitched back to reduce bulk. I resisted gluing these back, as though they have more than a tendency to fray, what with the very loose weave of the fabric, if I want to add more detail later, in the way of embroidery, extra beading, coloured mortar, etc, the glue would be quite a hindrance to smooth stitching.

 

Courtyard.
This part of the scene is probably the one I'm least happy with in it's current condition. It has plenty more features I'd like to include (I'm doing a separate post on improvements straight after this one), so for the moment, all I can say is that though it is small, it definitely draws the eye, thanks to it's bright-as-anything grass. My original plan to use soumac style embroidery on some high-count cross-stitch fabric didn't succeed, as the yarn needle necessary to hold the eyelash/fur effect wool was too thick to easily pass through the fabric, and required a lot of manhandling. The same was true of the scrap of fur fabric seen here, so I have couched the wool with a matching thread, and left it as a kind of impression of foliage. I'll be improving on this in the next few weeks, including adding some more foliage features along the edge nearest the water, where the tree roots are sticking out a little. Speaking of which...

Tree.
The tree wasn't initially going to be so bright, when I realised it's great potential for getting rid of the ends of my strands of silk floss! It's built up by winding embroidery floss around strands of wire, which are hooked through the fur fabric, adding the occasional extra wire strand for realism, keeping it simple for strength. In order to work with the materials that I had, I decided to wrap the initial colour for each branch closely, covering it twice. Then I could cover it again with a different colour, wrapping either at random, or in a cross pattern, to break up the colour, and create a deeper bark texture. 

Bridge and cobblestones.
This part of the project was inspired by a free knitting pattern I saw online - here's a link. Though the pattern itself was made on circular knitting needles, and therefore was entirely made in knit stitch, I made mine flat, and converted it to use stockinette. I decided to make my cobblestones a plain grey, but with a nice green filling to suggest moss, and add to the damp atmosphere. As for the bridge, it was made in the same way as all other features - a cardboard shell, measured, traced, a felt copy of each side made, covered and stitched, then glued into place.

River.
This was one of the trickiest elements - it would be, of course - it's clear! My plan at the start was to set pre-made textile elements in resin, to allow for my purchased fish beads to float, and weeds to rise and wave naturally. However, in measuring for the amount of resin necessary to fill the space I had in mind, I realised I would need up to a litre - and not only that, but reading about how much heat is generated by the chemicals in resin whilst it dries, it seemed like a very bad idea to use such a large amount of it on fabric. What we actually have here is a base, made from, again, felt and fashion fabrics bought from a charity shop, this time a lace skirt and a metallic scarf (the lace is the top layer, then two folded layers of the scarf, and then the felt). The cut of the skirt actually came in very useful with it's scalloped edging, making perfect background weeds to climb the brickwork behind. The base was machine stitched at random, and the clear vinyl shell attached. Next, I took a scalpel and cut long tears through all layers, poking through strips of fronds. These strips are made from another bought fabric, glued to some vinyl, and cut to shape (avoiding the question of fraying). I stitched by hand through the fabric and it's base, trying to even out my stitches, and pleating it in places, to keep it standing upright. To cover up the stitches that needed to be larger, I glued in some more leftover seed beads, combined with some iridescent bugles that were to have been fish. Finally, I cut the vinyl, inserted the bridge and stairs, and took one last piece of thread to sew them, a few fish, and some tufts (made from the de-woven strands left over from the brick walls made earlier) into place.

The Flat Roof.
Not too much to say about this one - I didn't have much of the right colour felt, and was a little nervous about cutting out the shapes. I estimated them straight from the model, cut paper copies, tried them on the model, cut the felt. I machined a ridge into the centre of the upper layer whilst the glue dried on the lower, then glued that too.

The Back View.
Here's a view from the other side, and again, the composition here is due to the footprint. The flat part nearest the camera is meant to be a potholed road, and here I used the metallic scarf from the riverbed to try and create some puddles. The real feature this side is the clock.

Church Roof, Door and Clock.
I had envisioned the roof to be more appliqué in the form of tiles, but once I realised how small the surface of a roof quarter was going to be, I decided to go the more secure route of cutting rows of scallops that were joined. As it was being joined directly to the cardboard, it again had to be glued. I used some scrap upholstery trim to neaten the edges, and cut a small cap to fit on top of the spire. For the moment, this is still removable, as I have a few changes left to make. The recessed doorway was a challenge to cut a good pattern for, and at the moment, I'm not satisfied with it. Something about the pattern I made for it has resulted in the walls bowing out, which would be a problem if it wasn't for, again, the argument that it is an old building, and this, it could be said, adds realism. The clock is one of my favourite parts of the model, being bright and decorative. I hand-stitched this in two passes, evening out the tension around the edges of the disc.

Stained Glass, and Tunnel.
As detailed in my previous post, the windows have been made with an adapted bead weaving technique. I'd originally hoped to make pictures with the beads, but for the sake of my schedule, I reasoned that as these were being viewed from the outside, the pictures might well be unclear, and only show blocks of colour. Whilst they were a little tricky to stitch in, they held their shape well when removed from the frame. The tunnel/walkway also pictured had to be made separately, and will eventually be stitched onto the outer panels. It keeps it's shape well currently without support, due to the snug fit and springy felt.

Diagonal Windows.
The first windows I tried to weave, these were very experimental indeed, and none too successful. This is for a number of reasons: 1, it is difficult to accurately mark out the starting point of lines that control diagonal width - in my first attempt, I made them too close together, and the beads didn't fit in the gaps. 2, The felt frames have remarkably little width between them, and begin to warp as soon as the card frame is removed. 3, as the beads are positioned corner to corner, they really want to slip down their strands. I think that this could be a part to take out and retry, depending on a survey of the loose threads from the brick covering. Also note that, trying to imitate candlelight, I have placed some of the golden lace from the riverbed behind the windows.

Special Roof Pleating. 
For this tiled roof, I wanted to do something clever, and imitate a terracotta roof with curved tiles. The plan I came up with do this was to take a pattern of the cardboard I wanted to cover, and to draw on it the approximate number of finished tiles. Then I copied it lengthways, adding depth between each tile to be pleated up. I folded the paper to see it still fit, then copied it again, adding a little more depth widthways. I doubled this, and cut it in red satin, covered with orange organza. I added staystitching, and began to pleat it. In the end, I wish I had added more seam allowance, because it only just makes the edges of the roof, and it is a little disappointing that it isn't more uniform, but it's a nice, bright feature, and when properly stitched in, I'm sure won't detract from the whole.

Flat Windows & Braiding.
Lastly, we have the front of the townhouse. It's made with many different layers of material, and there's an obvious join in the colour blocks - the upper half is made with the leopard print fabric that decorates the brickwork around the base, covered in some more orange organza. This was very difficult indeed to make fit the steps at the top of the building, and I think a little attention will need to be paid to the roof side, where it may well fray. The windows in the upper half are made from the same fabric as the road outside, covered with vinyl. The lower half is made from more of the metallic scarf used in the riverbed, some grey organza, and some more vinyl. Finally, to edge the windows, I made a selection of brick-coloured braids and stitched them on, separating the frames by a strand of floss.