3W: Maxine Sutton

who: Maxine Sutton
what: print and embroidery
why: stunning combinations of colour, shape and pattern! This July she celebrated 5 years of having her own store down in Margate. This blog posts tells you all about the story of how she started to where the store is now - very inspirational!

Maxine Sutton // facebook // blog 

3W: Eve O'Neill/Fforestfelt

who: Eve O'Neill/Fforestfelt 

what: needle felt sculptures 

why: spotted on country file, the work of Eve aka Fforest felt is truly lovely! She works with locally sourced wool as well as other items foraged from her surroundings in Wales such as feathers and lichen to needle felt beautiful sculptures of natural forms and animals. It's well worth watching the Country File episode if you can - it shows her whole process, including foraging! 

Fforestfelt // Facebook // country file on BBC iplayer 

technique: drawing with thread pva

Just a quick post to share my excitement with this technique! I love the idea of working with thread but not every student is going to be into the idea of sewing so if you've got any students like this get them to give this a go! 

Drawing with thread & pva

what you need: 

- embroidery floss (I used black but you can use any colour!)

- pva glue

- a flat plastic surface (I used a paint palette)

- glue stick or brush 

method:

1. Pour a layer of pva into your palette (approx. 5mm thick) - you can pour and tilt your palette or push the glue around to make a particular shape that suits your drawing or go right to the edges for an even shape

2. Cut stripes of thread to work with - if your using embroidery floss experiment with separating the 6 strands into different thicknesses so that you can get a range of line in your drawing

3. lay the strands thread into the pva to create your drawing - if you can't get them in the right position use your glue stick or brush to push them into place. You can also create loose threads around your drawing by hanging them outside of the glue area! 

note: the threads will start to sink into the pva and will look faint but the glue will dry clear so do not worry! 

4. Once you have completed your drawing leave to dry! This could take 24-48 hours depending on the thickness of the glue!

5. Once completely dry carefully peel your drawing away from the palette to reveal! 

extension: you could work into your drawing with machine or hand sewing OR cut away areas of glue to leave loose threads 

tip: I used a slightly dirty paint palette (you could paint the palette before hand if you wanted more control over this aspect) - the pva will pick up the paint from the surface which can add an interesting effect to your drawing, if you want it to dry clear use a super clean one! 

As always we'd love to see anything you create if you followed our instructions!

- Claire ❤

3W: Helen Anslow

who: Helen Anslow

what: embroidery

why: This work was shared with me by a student who is a cousin of the artist who thought I would like the work and I was absolutely mesmerised by it. I'm a huge fan of anything anatomical and textile related so they really appealed to me! I also love that each heart that's created has a concept behind it which Helen has begun to share on her blog. 

Helen Anslow // The story behind 'till death do us part' // the story behind 'Twins'

End of Year Exhibition

These are a selection of images of the work on display, if you'd like to see more please click HERE

I imagine there's plenty of us art teachers out there at the moment who've just endured the craziness that is the end of May/beginning of June marking, moderators and end of year exhibitions! My craziness is all over now, phew! So I thought I'd share some of the incredible work my students have created this year. To give it a bit of context, this year I have been on a one year maternity cover as curriculum manager for Textiles. I feel extremely lucky to have spent a year only teaching Textiles and to have solely taught our A2 students. It has been an absolute pleasure and I feel very proud of what my students have achieved.  As a newbie to the college I also thought why not challenge myself and so in collaboration with my students put on the first ever Fashion Show as part of the exhibition! It was brilliant fun and a great way to showcase the work in an appropirate context. It was also a lovely activity to end on with the students as it was a real celebration. You can have a look at some of their wonderful work in the video below... 

Hope you've enjoyed having a look at the work and if you are in the area it's open to the public till 19th June - you can find details of the exhibition, here and see a selection of work from the whole art department, here. 

- Claire ❤

Review: Graduate Fashion Week, My Favourites

I love this time of year, time to visit all of the graduate shows with my students and get them excited and inspired about their future prospects! Yesterday I went to Graduate Fashion Week, which has relocated this year to the Truman Brewery (which I loved! a much more exciting venue) to check out this years fresh young talent and to see the International Catwalk Competition catwalk show. I had a brilliant time and these were some of my favourites from the show...

anna neulinger

Keziah Newlove - her blog has great progress shots

Laura Baker - loved her illustrations

Ainslie Mackie - she had a beautiful portfolio 

Nicci James

Suzanne Nicolson 

Chloe Woodgate

I guess I have a bit of a thing for knitwear! 

- Claire ❤

Exhibition: The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to Catwalk

Ever since the Barbican announced 'The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to Catwalk' I've been excited! Last Saturday I finally got the chance to check out the exhibition and it did not disappoint. If you've still got a chance to squeeze another trip in before the end of the summer term you should definitely make this it! It's open till August 25th 2014. Also, one of the absolute highlights is that you're allowed to take photographs in the exhibition! (as long as you don't use the flash) There's nothing worse than students being unable to reference something properly because they can't find an image of it post-visit!

One of the key things I liked about the exhibition was that whilst walking around it I kept coming across ways in which you could extend the visit into the classroom, both before and after. I don't know about you but one of the things I often find tricky is making sure that a visit is really valuable to the students and that it doesn't become a 'day out', which is enjoyable at the time but forgotten about once you're back in the classroom or a token page or two in the sketchbook that doesn't really link to their project! I've put together a few suggestions of activities I would do if I took my students - there's some interesting topics, particularly in a wider context and gives the opportunity to discuss some more controversial topics which you might not normally get the chance to discuss in the Textiles classroom! 

Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation 

Gaultier's early work reflects the experiences he was having transforming from a child with a 'different' sexual identity into an adult who could choose his own. His work is often hypersexulised and exagerates the norms of masculine and feminine creating androgynous looks. You could also discuss his 'A Wardrobe for Two' collection (1985) for which he looked at masculine, feminine, androgynous and alternative conventions. Brilliant to get a bit of E&D into the trip and/or classroom discussions. 

Cultures and Countercultures

Punk, androgyny, nautical, fetish, tailoring and his many muses there's an array of things that you could pick out and focus on depending on what's relevant to your class. I loved the punk stuff, especially the yellow tartan...

Music, Film and Theatre

It's great to be able to highlight to students a wider-context in which more extravagant Fashion garments can be worn and Jean Paul Gaultier is a great example of this! There's some incredible pieces on show including garments from Madonna's Blonde Ambition Tour, Kylie Minogue videos, a piece inspired by David Bowie and a collection inspired by Amy Winehouse. I reckon a nice fun starter activity for the lessons building up to the trip would be to watch a few music videos. There's also a section in the exhibition on the infamous, Euro Trash, but perhaps that's best discussed with the older year groups only!

The App

When I saw the exhibition had it's own app I was keen to check it out. I love the idea of having an app alongside an exhibition, however in my experience it's always been a frustrating affair and unfortunately this one was no exception. I loaded it up before the exhibition so I could check it out what was on there; some video clips, written information and a camera function to upload and hashtag photos from the exhibition (I think, I never got this function to work). There was also some general info about opening times and ticket prices. 

When I got the exhibition I saw the symbol for the app by a garment so I tried to load it up and that's when the problems started, crash/restart/crash/restart, repeat! I finally got it to work but I couldn't see a clear correlation between what I was looking at and what I was meant to look at on the app. I also found at various points in the exhibition it stated things like 'go to the app to hear clips from various muses' unless I was missing something, there was just one! So there was a lot of hype going on as well. I didn't even get half way round before I gave up using it! Also be prepared to watch the same intro video a lot as it pops up everytime you open the app (which is a lot when it keeps crashing!). 

Obviously if you get this working this could be a fun way to make the exhibition a little more interactive for your students both during the exhibition and as a follow up! The exhibition has only been open for a few weeks so hopefully they'll be some bug fixes to sort the app out!

Go visit! 
Anyway it's a brilliant exhibition and well worth a visit, if your still not convinced here's the details and a video of Jean Paul Gaultier himself discussing the exhibition...

What: The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to Catwalk
When: now - till August 25th 2014
Where: The Barbican, London
Price: £14.50 (general) £9 (student) £7.50 (school groups and they'll give you a complimentary ticket to use before your visit if needed) 

Enjoy!
- Claire  ❤

3W: Sally Mankus

who: Sally Mankus

what: mixed media, sculpture, installation

why: We came across Mankus's work when looking for inspiring wall hangings/quilts to show my students. Her work is actually more varied than that, she specialises in sculpture and installation and looks at everyday domestic objects as inspiration. We like the combination of imagery, texture and colour in her pieces and the unique technique she uses to achieve this lifting rust, carbon and markings from charred surfaces. 

Sally Mankus // Interview on the creative diarist

3W: Michelle Hammer

who: Michelle Hammer

what: hand stitch tapestry 

why: Because she uses traditional needlework embroidery to give her work a pixelated look and depicts found text in urban locations to make comments on contemporary social beliefs. I couldn't help but giggle when I saw the above piece 'Like This Post', I love work that references social media in this manner! 

Michelle Hammer // exhibition review by We Heart 

3W: Dolce & Gabbana F/W 2014

who: Dolce & Gabbana
what: Their F/W 2014 collection
why: One of the AQA Textile exam themes this year is 'Mosaics' so I was pretty excited to come across this collection. The detail is incredible!  They used the Cathedral of Monreale as a starting point so I took it as an opportunity to encourage my students to visit Westminster Cathedral and take inspiration from the mosaics there as their starting point.

Mosaic Art Now review // Vogue //  buy yourself something from the collection (if you somehow have extreme amounts of £££ spare)

3W: Cayce Zavaglia

who: Cayce Zavaglia 

what: photo realistic embroidered portraits 

why: These portraits are incredible! We can't get over the beauty of them and attention to detail... the video below is well worth a watch as it shows the incredible process that goes into creating these pieces. 

Cayce Zavaglia // Interview // Vimeo video process 

Cayce Zavaglia | Portrait and Process from Garrett Zavaglia on Vimeo.

3W: Kindah Khalidy

who: Kindah Khalidy 

what: painting and surface design 

why: I came across Kindah's work on Instagram and fell in love. Beautiful abstract painting transferred onto fabric, what's not to love? I really want to buy one of her clutches but I can never decide which print I like... 

kindah khalidy // shop // instagram

Techniques: Weaving

Inspiration sheet from my classroom display

This year I've been fortunate enough to be working as a full-time Textiles teacher! Textiles is predominately my background and I've longed to have the opportunity to do it full-time rather than the odd shared group or built into the BTEC. One of the reasons is because I knew it would force me to introduce myself to new techniques, personally I specialise in knit and embroidery so I was keen to learn something new. When I looked over one of the schemes of work I initially felt daunted and then excited 'The Weave Project', gulp! Pretty much fresh territory for me! I was fortunate enough to have a brilliant and very experienced colleague who got me up to speed but it also opened me up to a whole range of inspiring contemporary practitioners! Not only was weave exciting I also discovered that it's very much in vogue and there's an amazing range of exciting artists/designers out there to look at. 

In the picture above are some of the inspiring artists/designers I've come across when researching weave for my project. They are; Mimi Jung (tops left), Alex Segreti and Kelly Rakowski (top middle) All Roads Designs (who we posted about back in October) Maryann Talia Pau (accessorie piece) Hannah Waldron (long piece on far right) and Maryanne Moodie (not pictured, oops! but who I'm enjoying following on Instagram) 

So today's post was all about giving you a flavour of the inspirational artists/designers out there that could be used as contextual links for a project. I'm aiming over the next few weeks to share examples,  subject matter ideas, instructions and possibly video tutorials to get you as excited about weave as I am! If you just can't wait for that we've got a brilliant lesson/project idea which the wonderful Mrs Jo Baker shared with us back on the blog in November, you can check it out - HERE.  

- Claire  ❤

Behind the scenes:Classroom Displays

I'm not sure if this completely falls under the term 'behind the scenes' but often our posts are small snapshots of things that we do in the classroom (or at home to practise!) so I thought I'd show you a bit of my daily teaching life - my classroom! As an art teacher I find displays are key! I like to make sure that my classroom looks as beautiful as the work my students are creating! As well as putting up inspirational stuff though theres the more general things, motivational tools, timetables, 'rules', health and safety and so on so I thought I'd share some of the bits and pieces from around the room I'm currently teaching in! I'll let you in on a slight secret though, whilst I wish my classroom was always this tidy this was in fact just before an open evening so the room was looking particularly clean! 

I'm lucky to have two large noticeboards in my classroom, one along each end of the room! This is perfect as it allows me to have one board dedicated to showcasing student work and one to share information with the students! On the board AS and A2 have their own boards. I share student schemes of work, current project themes and inspiration, competitions/clubs/workshop session information, our homework policy, the assessment policy and some class 'rules' that our tailored to each group (we come up with them as a joint activity in one of the initial lessons at the start of the year!) 

As well as the more 'serious' stuff on the noticeboards there's also a mixture of more visually engaging and motivating things! I like to include a 'student of the moment' to showcase pieces of work created in class that are particularly exciting or innovative! We try to update this a few times a term and sometimes include more than one student! A lot of our projects are based around colour so I keep a general colour wheel and colour chart information as well as some inspirational colour palettes based on 'street fashion'. I try to encourage my students to get out to local events and exhibitions in London so I share that information on the 'What's on' section of the board and lastly my favourite thing - inspiration sheets! For each new project I'll create an inspiration sheet with examples of exciting work by artists and designers - we also share it via pinterest with our students but I like to have it up in classroom too! 

Finally there's the exhibition/workspace outside the classroom! It's a lovely spot to put a few mannequins and to hang work and it's a space for students to work outside of lesson time if the classroom is too full! I hope you've enjoyed having a look at where I'm based for the best part of the week! I'd love to see the inside of your classroom and to hear ideas about displays - I'm planning a fresh display for the start of the exam unit so I'm on the hunt for inspirational stuff! Get in touch via email with your shots on on twitter @ihearteachingart

- Claire  ❤

Lesson idea: Rothko Weave

First of all we'd like to say a massive thanks to Mrs Jo Baker who got in touch with us over the summer to share her wonderful Rothko inspired weave project and has allowed us to share it with you here on the blog. We've mostly only taught at college level so it's always great to hear from teachers in schools and see the different way they do things! 

Rothko Inspired Weave Project

1. Students begin the project by researching the work of Artist Mark Rothko

2. They are then set a homework to do a landscape photography shoot! The focus of their shoot is to look for strips of horizontal colours within the landscape (if they can't take photographs they could always look for existing photographs at home! or you could provide some in class just in case!). The students need to bring a contact sheet of the whole shoot and select the 4 best images and print them a little bigger and bring those to the next lesson.

3. In class students work from the photographs to simplify the colours, first starting in colour pencil and then extended into watercolour with the two best compositions. 

4. They then gather scraps of material for homework in their chosen colours (you should also provide some in class!) Try and gather a range of interesting textures - fabric, crisp wrappers, carrier bags, threads, twigs, straws, etc! 

5. The students use a weave board made out of old mount card. Cut little v's in the top and bottom and wrap string around it in one long piece. There's a cool video tutorial - HERE

6. Students weave in a over and under on one line then under and over on the next - and then repeat! They need to pull the pieces of fabric down really tightly to make sure they get a nice strong piece of textile! 

7. Once they've filled the board they are done! They can turn over the weave, cut the string across the centre and secure each end - its a bit tricky so they will need to concentrate as the weave is unsupported until they've tied it all together! Once tied off they can use it in whatever way you want to develop it… 

As always let us know if you try this project - we reckon it's an ace way to combine art and textiles and we love coming up with ways to get students to appreciate a bit of Rothko! Enjoy! 

- Claire ❤
P.S all ideas, photographs and general awesomeness thanks to Mrs Jo Baker! Check out her Blog or start following her on Twitter!

3W: All Roads Designs

who: All Roads Design

what: hand weave 

why: I've been teaching a weave project at college so I've been on the hunt for some inspiring and contemporary practitioners and then I came across All Roads Designs. I particularly like the ones displayed on arrowheads as one of our project themes is 'Arms and Armour' so these were perfect! Absolutely beautiful handmade creations

All Roads Design // interview/process shots with All Roads // Claire's weave inspiration board on pinterest 

Exhibition: The knitting and Stitching Show

Today I was lucky enough to get to take my students out on a trip to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace in London. It's a brilliant event as it combines exhibits of textile art alongside the opportunity to purchase some materials! There's also a bunch of other stuff going on; workshops, fashion shows and there's the opportunity to talk to the exhibitors and people from various organisations and guilds. I had a great time so I thought I'd share some of my favourite bits just incase you're heading off tomorrow or over the weekend...

Exhibitors

My first stop was to see the incredible hand embroidery work of Tilleke Schwarz, I've been a fan of hers for many years so I was thrilled to finally see her work in real life! It is just incredible! I also got the chance to speak to Tilleke herself which was lovely! 

I stopped by to looked at the wonderful knit-based jewellery at Max's World and was amazed to discover this knitted axolotl! I immediately purchased the pattern for this! (oh you want one too? here you go! You can buy it online HERE) 

(From left to right) Katie Jones, Louisa Crompton, Lucy Jones

I like to stop by and check out the UK Hand Knit Award each year as I was on the stand back when I graduated! The stuff on show was incredible but the ones above were my absolute favourites! 

Workshops

The Upcycling Academy (headed by the wonderful Barley Massey of Fabrications) is definitely not to be missed! My students stopped by and got involved and transformed an old t-shirt into a bag (which the sported for the rest of the day!) it's a great cause and they've also put together a wonderful teachers resource pack to inspire lessons. You can download it HERE.  

Other

Oh how wonderful! A knitted taxi! Wouldn't it be nice to be driven around in that?

All in all it was a brilliant day and I recommend it if you get the chance to make it over there... if not there's always the Harrogate show, the Dublin show or the London show again next spring! Full details over at Twisted Thread

- Claire ❤

Review/Exhibition: Kaffe Fassett

Last Wednesday I attend the Teachers Evening at The Fashion and Textiles museum 'The Future of Knitwear'. The evening was in conjunction with the current Kaffe Fassett exhibition and it was a brilliant evening! I was hesitant about attending at first because, to be honest, I'm pretty cheap and I didn't like the idea of forking out £12 (£13 after the booking fee!) to go to an event! As our regular readers will know we are always on the lookout for free events, it's not always because we're tight but we, like many others I'm sure, don't work in places that can constantly reimburse you for every event you choose to attend, it's just not viable. 

I made an exception for this one because I am a knitter! I was planning to visit the exhibition anyway so I figured the extra cost wasn't too bad as it included a gallery tour and two talks; one by Belinda Boaden and Wendy Baker of True Brit Knits and the other by Sandy Black. Sandy Black discussed her new book Knitting: Fashion, Industry, Craft which looks at the history of knitting from a development point of view - the images shown during the talk were interesting and it looks like a fascinating book. The wonderful ladies behind True Brit Knits talked about their background in knit and about their company True Brit Knits who aim to create knitwear patterns from a fashion point of view. They have a regular feature on their blog 'Monday Moods' which is a wonderful resource for students of beautiful mood boards - I can't wait to show my students these to get them re thinking what ought to be included in a mood board. 

It was well worth it! Both talks were really engaging and I came away feeling inspired and with a really urge to knit (which I do regularly anyway but I feel inspired about creating some new stuff!). The only slight downside was that due to the large turnout they didn't conduct a formal tour, but the museum staff were on hand if you did have any questions. The exhibition itself is wonderful. The amount of colour and pattern on display all at once is incredible - I'm not sure my photographs do it justice so if you can get along to visit it, do! They even had the first cardigan Kaffe Fassett ever knitted on display! It was a truly wonderful exhibition. 

The exhibition is on till June 29th and it's £8 entrance (£5.50 concessions), don't be caught out like I have been before though, the museum is shut on Sundays and Mondays. I really do recommend the teachers evenings if it's for a designer or technique your passionate about! The next teachers evening is in conjunction with the upcoming Zandra Rhodes exhibition. Zandra Rhodes founded the Fashion and Textiles Museum and the exhibition is celebrating her work and the fact that the museum is celebrating it's 10th year! The talk sounds cool as you get special access to the design studio and archive and their going to be discussing how the digital archive can be used with schools/colleges. You can book tickets, HERE. 

- Claire ❤

Lesson ideas: AS Exam Theme 'Covert and Obscured'

We've already posted about our A2 exam theme resources and linked to the brilliant ones others have created but let's not forget AS! Above is the video intro we used for AS Graphics which outlines the briefs we're setting and the artists/designers we'd suggest researching for it. Below are some additional resources from a range of fabulous people that we've found online... 

Photography
our resources - pinterest board
Art2day
Sir John Lawes photography (has AS and A2 themed posts)

Graphic Communication
our resources - pinterest board

Fine Art
Saatchi Gallery - General schools section and PDF for the theme
Art2day
Slide Show via TES

Textiles
our resources - pinterest board 
our resources - paper dress lesson idea 
Slide show via TES

You can click through to view all our AS exam 2013 posts, HERE and A2 exam 2013 posts, HERE.  We're on Edexcel so that's what we've resourced for but there's a lot of stuff out there for AQA and OCR too and Art2day and Saatchi are great places to start looking!
- Claire  ❤

Lesson ideas: A2 Exam Theme 'Inside, Outside, In between'

I love this time of year! For me the exam theme is exciting it's the only time you have a really restricted time period in which to create resources and the key thing that can take a while to decide on, the theme, is decided for you by the powers that be! We deliver A Level Graphic Communication, Textiles, Photography and Fine Art between us so we've got a few resources together to share and we've been hunting around online too to find the best stuff that's out there. For Graphics I love a video intro, I've posted about them before, they are really easy to put together. I created mine straight from the powerpoint I'd already put together by exporting the slides as .jpeg files then placing them into iMovie, adding a bit of music and then you've got something to give the intro a bit of a pop (and a slide for students to pour over and digest a bit slower in their own time!). It also give a quick overview to how we've interpreted the themes and the artists/designers we're looking at in graphics. What I like about the exam unit is that the further you get through it the more resources you can find so I've put together a quick set of links to what I think is the most exciting stuff out there online being shared! Keep checking back to this post as we'll add to it each time we find something new... 

Photography 

Our resources - pinterest board 

Art2day

Sir John Lawes photography (has AS and A2 themed posts)

Graphic Communication

Our resources - pinterest board

Fine Art 
Saatchi Gallery - General schools section and PDF for the theme

Art2day

Exam Preparation Powerpoints (AS and A2) via TES 

Textiles 

Our resources - pinterest board

You can click through to view all our AS exam 2013 posts, HERE and A2 exam 2013 posts, HERE.  We're on Edexcel so that's what we've resourced for but there's a lot of stuff out there for AQA and OCR too and Art2day and Saatchi are great places to start looking!

- Claire  ❤