The Lace Space Revisited

The new and improved Lace Space

Last summer during Universal, our community arts festival up at The Heathlands Project, I created, with one of my groups, the Lace Space; made of knitted, crocheted, woven and melted plastic bags. You can find the original post and pictures here: http://www.delicatestitches.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/lace-space.html It took a bit of a battering during the high winds of winter and I was never totally happy with the top of the piece so over the past few weeks (months) I have been improving it. I've added a top tier and re-hung it outside on Monday. I'm really pleased with the new section, I think it looks a lot better and it also works better when you stand inside it. Many thanks to all the folks who helped me with the sourcing, cutting, knitting and crocheting of the plastic bags!

Looking up and out the top of the Lace Space

Seen through the trees

Swaying in the breeze

From the side

At the top

Looking up

Crochet detail

Crochet detail

More crochet detail

Lace detail

Looking out through the Lace



Through the Lace

The Lace Space

The Lace Space

This was one of the pieces I made with the Creative Textiles group during our two week community art project, Universal, at The Heathlands Project. We started off experimenting with cutting plastic bags into strips and fusing them with the iron, this produced some nice effects but the 'lace' was not very strong so we decided to knit the strips and then fuse the knitted piece. This created much firmer pieces which we were able to sew together to form the final piece. It took a lot of plastic bags and a lot of knitting, crocheting and weaving but I think the final piece is very beautiful and it is lovely to stand inside and look out. 

I cut out a pattern for the piece from newspaper and used this as a guide to lay out the pieces of 'lace' we'd made. Once all the pieces were stitched together the stitching was also fused with the iron.

Laying out the pieces and stitching them together

Weaving and stitching the pieces together

Detail: Crocheted lace

Detail: Knitted piece

Stepping inside (in the rain!)

Detail: Entrance arch

Swaying in the breeze

Detail: Knitted lace

 

Harris Re-fencing

Head Space Weaving

If I could do a passable impression of a Geordie accent I would now be saying "Day 7 on The Heathlands Summer Project." But I can't so instead I will regale you with tales of weaving, sunshine and shiny things. This afternoon (in the sunshine) we used the fabric we've been dyeing to weave two panels of Harris fencing. It took rather a long time but I think the panels look really good. One of the panels is just woven in calm restful blues to create a waterlike space and the other panel features a head and 'thought bubbles' and it has a working title of 'Head Space.' These panels also cunningly disguise the bins and recycling area as well as improving the Harris fencing, of which there is a lot around site.

Weaving begins

My Able Assistant!

 

Weaving complete

Onto shiny things, in Costume I've been making shiny silver space hoods (I'm not totally sure what they want them for) and a Mummy Alien costume. More pictures to follow...

The Lace Space and Monster Capes

How organised am I? I said I would blog about our Summer Project-Universal-and here I am actually doing it. Anyway, enough self congratulations. Today we have been outside chucking dye onto fabric ready to cut it up and weave it into the Harris fencing up around site. Another of the Creative Textiles projects I'm doing is a space (see drawing) that you can step into created from knitted/crocheted/woven plastic bags, melted and attached together. It's beginning to concern me quite how much plastic I have to knit before Thursday but I'm not alone, my able assistants are more than pulling their weight.

The Lace Space-Concept drawing

Knitted and melted plastic bags

Crocheted and melted plastic bags

One of the Costume projects I'm doing is monster capes. I made a pattern for a simple hooded cape and then decided the hoods would be good with eyes and teeth to make them into monsters. Which is what you see below. The second one even has eye holes!

Monster!

Monster with eye holes!

Stay tuned for more fun fabric based frolics!

Universal

So, my excuse this time for not posting for two weeks is...Universal. This week we began our summer project up at The Heathlands, two weeks of arts and madness involving various community groups, volunteers and artists . Last year we did a production of Midsummer Night's Dream which was fantastic but incredibly exhausting. Our theme this time is 'space' in all its many forms (inside, outside, imaginary, outer and so on) and the title, as mentioned above, is Universal. This year we're doing things a little differently and instead of one big performance the two weeks will culminate in a two day community arts festival on 12th and 13th August. There will be all sorts of performance and visual arts and food.

You can see some of the things we've been getting up to on The Heathlands Project Facebook page, which you can find here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/The-Heathlands-Project/137242449671346 or just search facebook for The Heathlands Project, Carlisle.

I've been working with the participants to create costumes and also I've been running creative textiles. We've come up with some really exciting ideas and I will hopefully blog about them as the week goes on. In our creative textiles group we have several different projects going on. One involves weaving fabric into the Harris fencing up around site (those big metal grill fences you see around building sites.) We've had fun chucking dye around and if the weather is kind to us we will start actually weaving next week.

Another project involves plastic bags, more specifically knitting and crocheting plastic bags, melting them and then joining them together. I hope to make a cylindrical shape that you can step into from all the pieces of plastic-lace we're making. This piece is about negative space, as the plastic creates beautiful lacy patterns when melted, and also about how we perceive the space around us.

A drawing I've done of 'The Lace Space' to show how I envisage the piece looking when finished. You will be able to step inside and look through the lace at the space around you.

Detail of 'The Lace Space' drawing

We're also making pom-pom galaxies, crazy space creatures and various bits of art using textiles. It's all good fun and ideas are being sparked all over the place. Or should that be space... 

Anyway, pictures to follow and if you're in the area on the 12th or 13th please come and check out what we've been up to. We'll be open to the public between 11-3 each day.