Freddie Robins

Freddie Robins 

Freddie Robins is a knitted textiles artist who studied at Middlesex university. She uses her knitting to explore contemporary issues of domestic, gender and the human condition, but also the preconceptions surrounding knitting as a craft its self.  

This piece above is probably my favourite piece from Freddie. Its a self portrait based on the well recognised image of Saint Sebastian being martyred. But instead of arrows pricing her skin she has replaced them with knitting needles.  With this piece she is trying to make you think about the stereotypical image that craft, especially knitting has with being a passive, benign activity, and also who you can no longer fly with knitting needles and there are no longer on display in charity shops and they are seen as almost a weapon.  

I really like this piece as it makes you think about how people now look at craft and what the preconceptions of crafts are as a whole.

http://www.freddierobins.com

Mary Butcher

Mary Butcher 

Mary Butcher is a artists / basket weaver who was originally a willow specialist who was learning traditional local work from apprenticed makers. 

She then went into researching in the history of basket making, doing this widened her contacts throughout the UK and overseas with basket makers. 

 I really like her work as it is so different and refreshing, my favourite would have to be the picture above of the bag this piece is called 'Silver Bag with Hidden Gold' its made from Birch bark, waxed linen thread, and leather twining. I love how it is made from the bark of a tree and also the natural colours you can see from the bark inside the bag.

 The piece above is called 'The Light' its made from Willow, Willow bark, and Twining, and then from these she has simply woven them together to create a beautiful piece.


http://www.marybutcher.net/index.htm

BIG KNITTING

Recently I got some custom made knitting needles made for me as i really wanted to have a go at some giant knitting. These needles i had made were 20mm and about 1 metre long so they are pretty big. 

So then the next issue was getting yarn big enough for me to actually knit with without having massive whole in the knitting so i did find some on Etsy but none in the UK so it all became very expensive and i had to wait a while to receive the yarn etc..... 

I went to uni and visited the fabric cupboard and asked our technician what he thought would be the best place to get what i want, after not really finding anywhere, he showed me some fleece that they stocked in the cupboard and it was perfect 

This is the natural fleece that i brought from the fabric cupboard 

I then went onto to dye the fleece as i wanted a yellow colour as yellow is all i can think about at the moment!!

As you can see after i had dyed it, it became a bit felted which at first i was like oh this isn't going to work, but it actual fact its a plus as it makes the yarn stronger as the fleece on its own was very easy to pull apart and would of just broke when i tried to knit with it.

Above you can see the yellow ball of felted yarn unseen, so next was to spin it, but there wasn't a spinning wheel big enough for us to spin it, so again i went and asked the technician and he had a brilliant idea of using a drill and a screw in eyelet in the end of the drill. One end attached to the drill and me the other end of the corridor holding the other end. Powered the drill up and it spun the hole lot in no time.

We then had the slow process of wrapping it around this cardboard tube and pulling all the curly bits out. Once we have it all spun and wrapped around the tube it then had to go into the steamer for 30mins just to make sure it didn't unravel when taken off the tube.

And finally this is the finished ball of YELLOW yarn and i have to say i love it, defiantly going to be making a lot more of my own yarn.

Finally here is the start of me knitting with some of it. I have to say don't be fooled by a big ball of yarn if your making something on massive needles as the yarn will go down so quick so I'm going to have to make a lot more, but i love making it so its go biggie.

Elizabeth Ashdown

Elizabeth Ashdown 

http://www.elizabethashdown.co.uk

Elizabeth Ashdown's work specialises in making innovative and contemporary mixed media designs for both fashion and interior markets.

She also makes woven jewellery alongside designs for embroidery and printed textiles and she has done commissions for Liberty and Cassamance.

The materials she uses are very unique and unusual. She uses a mix of thick and thin yarns to create really structurally interesting pieces. I think that this really works to create interesting pieces that are different in every way.

She uses really bright and almost clashing colours in some of her pieces and i feel that this works really well when the whole piece comes together, but she also really thinks about the colours that are used as in some of her more fashion/clothing pieces she has to really think about how the colours will contrast with the garment itself. I think that with the garment pieces she has used colours in a clever way to almost blend in with the garment and not stand out and her piece then become part of the garment itself.

Catskill Kiwi Textile Art

Catskill Kiwi Textiles Art 

http://www.thecatskillkiwi.com/untitled-custom-page

This is an artist that I have only recently found but since finding her, i have to say I LOVE her work. I love the look of the wall hangings as they as rugged, but still beautiful pieces of work.

They are all handwoven by the creator of Catskill Kiwi called Toni, she tries to use as much locally sourced yarns etc as she can, and as you can see all the pieces she makes are a one of and each one is different.

With her woven pieces she uses a lot of locally sourced yarns and wools etc so she know where all her yarn come from. She is always on the look out for unusual fibres, interesting colours and anything that will make her work stand out. She generally makes a piece around what materials she can find, not just limited to wool, she also uses a range of string/jute/twine/rope. As you can also see from her work she is a huge fan of anything chunky, in her words 'the bigger the better' 

I can relate to this a lot as in my eyes the bigger the better as you can see from my other blog post about making my own yarn.