mariapilar-tactilesurfaces

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FINAL VISUALIZATION AND REFLECTION

I ended up going back to the vertical composition because it felt more intentional: the building and crashing of water. I thought more about the placement of each hoop, and I think it reflects that. Obviously, were it a real piece, the scale of the yarn compared to the hoops would be different (ie, the bottom hoop would be big but the loops would be small in relativity) but this is just a mock-up of what it could potentially look like. In the original digital mockups I did on photoshop, I kept a lot of the fabric; however, I think it looks cleaner without and realistically, if it were to actually go on someone’s wall, the cloth would be fully tucked behind. 

I learned a lot in this project and mastered what was, originally, quite a difficult medium to get a grasp on. I now feel like I know my needle and the yarn and the way that they move together; what sticks, and what doesn’t. The progression from really literal, concrete, condensed needle-work to the more freeing, abstract method is something I am proud of. 

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VISUALIZATION 5

Playing around even further with scale and making the big pieces seem bigger by juxtaposing them with super small pieces. 

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VISUALIZATION 4

I really want the hoop with the long white asymmetric tassel to be one of the hero pieces, so I enlarged that and made some others smaller. Also turning some on their sides has proven to be quite visually striking. 

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VISUALIZATION 3

Out of curiosity, even though a waterfall isn’t horizontal, I rotated the piece. Interestingly, it works better than I thought it would. I’m not sure if I prefer it over the vertical piece, but I’ll continue to play around with it. 

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VISUALIZATION 2

More hoops + different sizes definitely adds a necessary element. In the same way that I left negative space on the actual hoops, I want to leave some breathing room for the pieces to shine, while still covering the whole wall in the sense that it’s covered from top to bottom. 

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VISUALIZATION 1

Wall mockup credit: <a href='https://www.freepik.com/psd/sofa-mockup'>Sofa mockup psd created by jp3d.visual - www.freepik.com</a>

This was the most basic visualisation, in that I put all four hoops on the wall. I wanted to see what they looked like plainly - for the next one, I’ll start playing around more with scale. 

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FINAL, MOST RESOLVED SAMPLE

This combined all the techniques in a refined, purposeful way, and I feel that it all came together. At the bottom of the piece, I decided to cut the medium loops so that it felt a bit more ragged and raw. The whole loops were starting to feel too clean, thus that was my resolution. 

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LAYING IT OUT

This is the sort of “flow” that I want: the relief piece, the full piece, then the dramatic end piece. For the visualisation, I will digitally duplicate them and play around with scale and placement. 

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FULL MIDDLE PIECE

I wanted to “blow up” that smaller experiment piece in that I liked the vertical pattern of water moving downwards, instead of always necessarily flowing horizontally. I started with the small, scattered stitches, then towards the middle started increasing the length and closing the proximity. 

Adding the darker colors at the bottom to imitate that feeling of “going deeper”/being lighter at the top, similar to the way that water is lighter on the surface, and then as you explore the depths, it’s darker and harder to see. 

Adding white: 

Since the first piece had white hanging over it, I wanted to represent the water foam in a different visual manner that would build up to that. I started creating a rim, which I achieved with the white ruffled yarn with super close, tight, short loops, so that it looks like sea foam. Instead of the whites hanging down on this one, I have the blues with their tails purposefully left on and with different entry points and lengths so that it’s varied. 

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CONTRASTING STITCHES

Since the rim was long vertical stitches, I wanted to create visual and tactile interest by juxtaposing that with short, horizontal stitches. I think this mimics a wave really well - it has that smooth, shiny flat stitch and then builds into the wave. 

I wanted to push the color blending even further. This was my method of leaving some areas blank then coming back with a different length and color of stitch. Then, of course, leaving some completely blank. This was a really playful and abstract way of working and I enjoyed it thoroughly. 

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FLAT/SATIN STITCH

For the relief piece, I wanted to work solely in that negative back-to-front stitching method. The satin stitch, especially, was of interest to me, because I felt that combining the punch needling and the embroidery was a) too time consuming b) too different. This was a compromise to resolve that. 

However, the first iteration that I tried started to unravel because the loop length that I choose was too short; you can see it pulling away from the cloth in the bottom right. As well as that, three rows of flat stitches seemed like too much. 

Decided to refine it down to one row in a longer stitch to create a rim. This was a lot sturdier and cleaner. 

[mariapilar-tactilesurfaces]

LAYOUT CONSIDERATIONS

Technically, I already had two viable panels for the final visualisation, even though I didn’t intend for the one on the top right to be used; it was more of an experiment, but I was so pleased with the final product that it felt a shame not to use it. 

Instead of having the whole concept of building intensity on one piece, I thought I could break it down, adding to the more abstract feel of the work. I knew I wanted at least two more hoops for the visualisation. I wanted one to be a relief in the negative stitches, and I wanted one to be a more “full” piece in the middle which could be constructed so that it looks like there is a waterfall-esque flow of tame water -> filling up -> spilling over the edges and rushing out. 

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FILLING IT OUT + FINISHING IT UP

It looked a bit empty in the middle so I wanted to add more stitches. Overall, I think this is a great panel for the wall covering. 

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ASYMMETRIC TASSEL ADDITION

I found that the traditional tassel method I followed along was too neat and refined, but I liked the way that it hung over the hoop so wanted to resolve it in a way that maintained that, but looked more organic. To do this, I pulled some loops longer than others so that they were all varying sizes. I then cut them at their individual halfway points. 

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TASSEL EXPERIMENT

The tassel experiment came out quite uniform and I don’t think it resembles water or sea foam; I think if I were to do it again, I would resolve this by trying different lengths. However, this iteration showed that the actual method of making the tassel is feasible and easy. I don’t think that the “finishing” stitches are necessary because that would make it feel more resolved and man-made than necessary, and structurally the stitches are sound anyway.

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TASSEL TUTORIAL

Since the long cut loops didn’t work the way I wanted it to, I wanted to resolve the issue by trying something else. I noticed that a lot of the exemplars I found of punch needle wall coverings had tassels, and wanted to try my hand at that. This tutorial covered a lot of stitches, but the most beneficial to me was the tassel tutorial. 

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USING LENGTH, PROXIMITY + COLOR AS HIERARCHY

One of the design problems I had to resolve was how to make the piece less literal (the rug in the shape of an actual waterfall) and to create a more abstract pattern while still conveying that sense of rush and gravity. I resolved this by actually getting rid of a pattern all together and working freely. To do this, I kept the front side of the hoop facing me instead of focusing on the back and choosing entry points based on where was visually pleasing and aesthetic, instead of working to a pattern. 

While I worked with a lot of experimental stitches, sometimes the core of it remained simple and gained complexity through simply varying the stitches and yarn color. In part 1, I used different lengths of stitches, but they were all sectioned off: there was a set place for short stitches, medium stitches, large stitches etc. I wanted to keep some of that, but make it look and feel less restrictive, so left some areas blank when working with one length and color, then came back to fill it in with a different length and color - this is how I maximised and made the “blending” of colors and stitches intentional. I like to start with small, well spaced out stitches to create that feeling of building up, then gradually increasing to long, condensed stitches