When I sat down to start working on project 2 only thing I was thinking of, is find the best possible way to link it to project 3 (which concludes assignment 5 along with my own selection section) and show how this journey took me to my goal achievement.

Being excited but a bit worried as I didn’t know how to start , I decided to gather all sorts of materials , in order to get inspiration from them and help me go further down with my thoughts and ideas .

So, first of all I’ve got my strapping machine to knit different colours of strings but always having in mind my sunflower concept I have worked on project 1 :shades of yellow along with some khaki, as my whole perception, my whole inspiration comes from Vincent Van Gough’s work and it’s loosely related to it where what I really liked in it is his celebration of colours .

Individually knitted acrylic yarn

…And space dye bright acrylic yarn…

..Which I have decided to knit using again pegs as needles.

Another knitting project would be 3 ply strapping , 2 finger and knitting forward , 4 finger knit:

Really happy with the result.

Managed to feed through (when it turns from 2 finger to 4 finger knitting) an organza fabric

When I finished my knitting concepts made me think I was creating pieces of puzzles , puzzles that haven’t a form yet but they will guide me to give birth to them when I will feel there is no need to gather more materials.

First of all, fabric.

Lots of it !The more, the better!

I’ve also (as demonstrated before )sourced organza fabric which I liked the transparency of it, as well as I found an old computer cooler which in my eyes resembled a sunflower;Talking about my main subject I bought felt sunflowers in different sizes.

Furthermore ,I found more inspiring items like swirling fidget spinners, fruit nets, and two faced (gold-silver decotative flowers).

and then stared arranging them on the fabric, in sort of a bouquet form.

Then, to finish it off , I’ve used my string to shape it as such : a sunflower bouquet.

One idea takes you to the other.

What would we need for the concept ?

A vase, which I’ve drawn using yellow to match my story.

then I took a glue gun to create linear forms and trace down a sunflower sketch I’ve made .

I had found pink organza and I have decided to glue it on and then , because it was a bit blunt, I’ve coloured it up.

Then in order to make it more interesting I have used the same colour palette on the organza fabric.

Then I asked myself, what if that sunflower was in a field of flowers?

Using the the warm glue pistol, what if I create lines onto fabric layers , to do sort of mark making?

What if I use painted dried warm glue, dried acrylic colour (yellow circular shape and embroidered sunflower formations , along with lots and lots of colour and fabric?

I have considered to use yarns as well so I’ve gathered few odd cones of various counts and qualities.

Thinking about yarns , what if I used some of yarn formations I had created on assignment 4?

Ribbon surface especially knitted with a twist:

A middle channel with a hole in the middle so I can feed a string through and pull in to create a pleating ,accordion effect.

When I had finished assignment 2 , drawing with stitch , I was told I was going wrong direction.Therefore I had to redo it all the way from the beginning.

My tutor told me not to throw away my work but keep it for future reference:

I feel now is the time to do it!

The flower concept fits perfectly to my story.

I had produced a fern jacquard using different yarns in order to show the texture and different look of the outcome.

Having an extra piece of the same image but in different colour and different yarn quality (boucle yarn) I thought what if I scratch the surface and brush it?

The surface has changed noticeably mainly on the boucle yarn area and I find a nice contrast between the two knitted colours where the black part stays non hairy .

And to push my boundaries a bit further, what if I cut out some leafs and replace them with a nylon, transparent material?

Encouraging myself forward , I wanted to work with colour and surfaces a bit more:

First experimentation was with cotton fabric,

The fabric came out in a nice uniform beige tone.

Then I have tried to do the same thing with a commercial fabric I have knitted:

I had intentionally used black acrylic yarn for the background colour and ecru cotton slub (thick and thin yarn) to do my jacquard.

To my great satisfaction, the pigment was absorbed ONLY by the natural fiber which turned again the colour into a uniform beige.Also , because cotton slub is an unprocessed yarn it followed the natural shrinkage process.

Then to work on the surface a bit more, I have used a nail to scratch and destroy the surface on the flower center a little bit; I had also used a sand paper to scrape the black surface but it didn’t work out as it seems it brushing works out only with hairy fancy yarns.

On my next piece

I had followed a different route:

I had wrapped coins around the surface in such extent where it got completely distorted.

What if I cut the following in order to reconstruct it ?

and in order to support it would be good idea if I would create strapping surfaces:

and some individual loops ,stitches knitted in a way they create a line:

….Inspecting my materials and my accessories I strongly believe I’m ready to move onto project 3 where I would utilize as many as possible and have the best result possible.Just looking forward to it!