Comments from the Visitors Book, Millgate Exhibition

Wow - what a display of techniques and such a high standard and beautiful results - Congratulations. CF

Stunning work! A feast for the eyes and food for thought! BS

Fascinating process and range of outcomes - so many different interpretations and media used. All so beautifully displayed in this space. JB

Excellent exhibition. Really enjoyed looking through all the books. Best exhibition I've been to. LW

So varied and vibrant. It's amazing how one idea can go so many different ways. MA

A very interesting concept. What a good use of 'technology' at last! KS

Wish I could get that creativity out of my computer! DH

A wonderfully stimulating display, using modern technology and embroidery skills that have passed down through generations of crafts people. WH

Truly amazing to see the process from the beginning through to the final piece. I wish I had such imagination - let alone computer skills.

Amazing pieces of art, so different and imaginative. Intriguing how different people's interpretations of 'things' turn out. Loved it. L

Consequences - Last Day

Today is the last day of our first exhibition and I think all Dotties should be proud of the success of Consequences. Everyone worked incredibly hard to make it all happen, and judging by the comments in the visitors book it has been very well received. The staff at Millgate Museum in Newark (the venue for those of you who have not managed to get there), were impressed, and the level of interest in the work has been high.

One of our aims was to make people realise just what a wonderful tool the computer is for assisting the creative design process in textiles, and I believe we have achieved that. People, young and old, have been fascinated by the computer work that went into creating each piece, and judging by the comments, we have inspired some of them to try it out for themselves.

We created a CD of images of all the work in the exhibition plus much of the background computer work to aid people in trying out some of the effects themselves. The CD is available for £5 plus P&P and it is incredible value for money as there are 130 images on the disc. (if you would like a copy email enquiries@rarebird.ltd.uk) Here is a little selection from the CD.

Erica's novel earrings created by scanning in clothing, and printing out on to paper and fabric then folding into origami earrings.

Jenny's beautiful Lillies created with print, paint and applique

Ros's nifty little Dorothy bag and how she came up with the design

Hilary's delightful frost inspired 3D wall piece in subtle colours, each of the four rosettes in the piece has been created by printing on to different surfaces.

Lesley is a first time exhibitor and one of the newest members of the group, but you would never know it from this lovely little bag.

I used one of the games of Consequences as the starting point for this mask made out of Friendly Plastic, fabric and wire.

Pat's delightful Clematis combines simple paper print outs and fabric.

If you missed the exhibition, then you missed a treat, but you can still purchase a CD, join a local group or the CTDG (Computer Textile Design Group), take a class, or simply get cracking on your own and see what your computer programmes can do for your creativity (a good way to start is buy a digital photo magazine and follow some of the tutorials on their free CDs, or check out the wealth of free tutorials available on line).

If you want to know more about each of us as artists then some of us have websites and blogs, others you will have to email directly, so check out the links at the side of the page.

Designs On Textiles "Consequences" Exhibition Oct-Nov 2010

A video from our "Consequences" Exhibition at the Newark Millgate Museum.

The exhibition runs from 9th October to 28th November 2010

You can view this video in high definition (the YouTube default is 320p, you have to click on that and select 720p to view)

The exhibition is up

Fame at last! The exhibition is up and receiving good reviews in the 'Comments Book'.
Some visitors have come especially, others have just happened upon it. For those who haven't been yet, there's still 5 more weeks to visit.

Intermesh

This was the first piece of work I produced for our forthcoming exhibition at the Millgate Gallery, Newark which is on from 9th October until 28th November. It is approx. 60 x 40cms and mounted on a dark blue padded background.

Origami Earrings Day

Today we had a very enjoyable day making origami earrings.

I will be teaching a class at the Husqvarna Shop in Nottingham on 26th October and I needed to practise teaching how to make the earrings with people who were not familiar with Origami techniques.

We made paper earrings, fabric earrings and then more paper ones, but this time to match our clothes. I had asked everybody to bring along paper print outs of scans of some of their clothes, along with the real garments to see which worked best. It was really interesting to see what everybody had chosen and how successful they had been. If you click on the picture, it will enlarge and you can see the huge variety of papers and fabrics we used. You can see some were made from print outs from our Still Life consequences game.

I hope everybody has gone home buzzing with ideas and will make more pairs, maybe as presents.

By the way, I posted this directly from Picasa (using the little icon - Blog this) - just another way to post.

Erica

Putting up posters

With our forthcoming exhibition only 19 days away we are busy putting up posters in the Newark and Nottingham areas - those interested, please make a note of the details!

The posters were designed by Erica and Jenny - the image, printed on fabric, was taken from 'Millgate Consequences'.... more information on this and other images at the exhibition! Hope you can come along.

Lesley

PS To read all the details on the poster, just click on it.

A bag of frost

Recipes

Fancy a piece of lemon drizzle cake, cherry and coconut cake or a cupcake. A wipeclean

recipe book where you can add your own recipes into the plastic sleeves.

Sous the chef

Dear all, long time, no blog.

In preparation for our DOT exhibition I am posting the details which explain the design behind my chef's hat. We were working on images of kitchen utensils and the idea to make a chef's hat suddenly came to me. I had great fun making it, hope you like it too.

Pink Belt

Jenny's belt

Our smiling faces

Here we all are in Ros's garden. It was the first time we had all been together for some time, so we grabbed the photo opportunity at today's meeting.

From L to R Jenny, Hilary, Lesley, Ros, Pat, Liz and Erica

An Exciting Announcement!

We’ve been very quiet for quite a while now but for good reason - read on…..

We have some exciting news for you – we are holding an exhibition of our work later this year. It will be at the Millgate Museum, Newark, Nottinghamshire from October 9^th –November 29^th and entitled “Consequences”

Whilst visiting the museum to see the space for our exhibition, we decided that we should have a round of Consequences based on a photo taken at Millgate. As it was Lesley’s turn, she chose a photo she had taken of one of the displays – a mangle. On our Picasa Web Album, you can see “All 49” of the images from us which have all been taken from the photo of the mangle. You can also see how we have arrived at each of the images.

Much of the textile based work in the exhibition stems from computer images generated in our Consequences games we have played during the last 2 years. Other work being exhibited has been produced as a “consequence” of using a computer as a tool somewhere in the design process. There will be a very varied display, not only of our finished pieces, but also background information explaining how computers can be used effectively.

More information coming soon….

CTDG Blog

Did you know that the CTDG (Computer Textile Design Group) has now started up a blog? It is early days yet, but I think it is an excellent idea and a great way to be more interactive with members. I hope that we will see lots of wonderful images appearing on the blog, links to other people who share our interest in using the computer as a design tool for their textile work, and generally loads of interesting stuff.

However, it is really very new, and there is only a little bit up on the blog so far, so what we need to do is visit the blog, make comments, suggest links / content etc and see whether we can help get it up and running and full of intersting things.

Over to you!

Frosty Consequences - The Full Story

We have finally got our act together and gathered all the images from our most recent game of Consequences here on the blog, and in our Picasa Web Album
For those that do not already know, we all started off with the same picture (chosen this time by Pat), and we each did a manipulation on it and passed it on to the next person. They then performed their magic on the image and passed it on again. So it went on until everyone had worked on everyone elses images.

The aim of the game was to get everyone exploring their own software on a regular basis, and therefore grow in understanding and confidence with their package. This helps us all to more effectively use the computer as a design tool, but it also gets everyone contributing to the group, regardless of level of expertise. It was NOT a specific aim of the game to produce beautiful designs ready for textiles at any stage of the process, but we all found ourselves delighted by some of the images. Individually we might well use some of them to develop further for our own textile work, however we each choose to express it.

If you want a more complete explanation please see some of the earlier posts, or check out the April issue of DesignIT, the magazine of the Computer Textile Design Group (CTDG)

The slide shows below give you a flavour of what we have been up to, but the best way to understand the transformations is to visit our Web Albums and click on any image to enlarge it.

Pat's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages




Erica's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages



Lesley's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages




Liz's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages




Jenny's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages




Ros's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages






Hilary's Frosty Story

View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Frosty Consequences

Pat supplied this lovely image for us.

Our latest round of Consequences whizzed round the group without a hitch. There were some lovely images created, and some of us had trouble working out what to do with them as we liked them just the way they were. But that is not the name of the game, so we carried on making our changes and passing the images along. Once again it was amusing to see how often we almost reversed a transformation done by the previous person, without of course knowing that we were doing so. Pat had suggested that we retain the "frostiness" in our manipulations. This was very hard to achieve, particularly as we got further in to the game. Occasionally we threw the frostiness out of the window in favour of something summery or just plain lovely, but distinctly warm. At other times we managed to drag back a bit of winteriness, whether that was frosty or not is open to interpretation!

As we have 2 new members to the group (Welcome Jenny and Lesley), we decided it would be too time consuming to replicate everything on the computer so we worked through the A4 sheets without the aid of the computer, but we made notes of things people were unclear about or wanted to see demonstrated. After all the images had been considered and we had our long list of things to explore, the computer was turned on and we demonstrated (fumbled and bumbled) our way through the queries so that everyone was clear (!) about how things had been achieved. This was a much more efficient way of working, and concentrated the mind and exercised the brain cells all afternoon.

Rather than posting everything to the blog this time, we thought that we would upload the images to Picasa Web Albums and everyone can see in more detail the progression of each image. There are currently 3 peoples work to link to, but hopefully we will have every one's up and running very soon.

Go check out Erica's transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/EricaMThomson/DotFrostA4Sheets#



Ros's Transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/roswillis58/FrostConsequences?authkey=Gv1sRgCNHQ5JCzm6j_ggE&feat=email#



Liz's Transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lizziewelch01/DOTConsequencesFrosty#

When everyone has posted their images we will need to gather them together into the right "stories", but in the mean time you can follow each story by looking at the Web albums in the following order: Pat, Erica, Lesley, Liz, Jenny, Ros, Hilary. Start with one persons image (eg Frosty_Liz) and move to Jenny's web album (when it is up) and find Frosty_Liz_Jenny, then to Ros's web album and find Frosty_Liz_Jenny_Ros, and so on. If you do this for all 7 starting images, you can see that there are 49 A4 sheets with iterations on, and that is a lot of information - too much to put up on the blog in full.

The image below is the final iteration of my starting image, and as you can see, there is nothing recognisable left of the starting image, but having been transformed into bright colours at one stage of the game, it was dragged back into the appropriate winter season to finish up as a snowflake - most appropriate.

The story of my shell image is in the picture below. I used the magic wand to select some of the shells, and then turned them a bit pink. Erica tidied them up and made some more of them. Pat went wild and funky and Hilary obviously did not want so much green! She introduced a ripply filter which Ros then dribbled down the page and Chrissie made it into a mosaic. We all had fun, and everyone learn't a little bit more about their programmes. Slowly, slowly, we are all feeling a bit more in control; well, at least I think we are!

Hilary's Shell Image

This is my shell image as it travelled around the group. Ros built on what I had done but then it took some surprising twists. Like the others there is not much 'shelliness' left, but I love the colours of the last piece.
Hilary

Pat's Shell Image

The journey of my shell image took some surprising turns. I love the way Hilary developed my first work on the image, this was then built on by Ros. After Ros the image became a bit of a mystery until it was brought back to 'shells' by Liz in an extremely ghostly manner. Erica then strengthened the 'shelliness' - lovely image, but it does rather look like a plate of tasty mussels !
Pat

Shelliness

As everyone soon realised retaining the 'shelliness'

became more difficult as we passed the images on.

If you haven't already done so I would be interested to

receive your A4 write ups of how you achieved each image.

I like the transition of my shell and the final image which

reminds me of a flower. Well done everyone.