A-level textiles exam

As I shared with you my a-level textiles coursework I thought it would be nice to also share with you my exam work that I also did that year. The theme that we were given was 'Combinations and Alliances', I then chose to focus on 'Wild Animals in the Urban Environment' as my topic.

For my primary research I photographed both animals from birds to squirrels and rabbits for the animal side of my project and billboards and graffiti for the urban side. From the images above you can see how I sketched from the photos (and also from secondary resources, the elephant). From the bottom right image you can see how I started testing out different techniques and looking at ways to combine the 'wild animals in the urban environment' from stenciling a bird and squirrel with a graffiti background and also adding stitching and the stitched fabric butterfly.

From these four images above you can see how these samples I have created developed. The bottom left are my favourites as they were some of the earliest ones that I made (and those birds are so cute)! The bottom right is another one of my favourites and was inspired by the work by Donya Coward. From the ideas of these samples and many others, I finally started to come up with some ideas for a final piece, one of my designs is shown in the top right.

My final design and piece! For the exam you are given 12 hours (i think) to create your final piece and although it sounds like a lot for now when you're making all the little details and pieces it really isn't! the 'urban' animals I created from painting in graffiti style onto fabric, cutting them out and stitching them onto the background fabric. I made the bird house from bending and cutting straws to make the squares and triangles, sewing the fabric around them and then stitching them together using a thin decorative wire to create this bird house. I also cut a square out of the front and folded and stitched around it and for the roof used curved cut out pieces of different fabrics and overlapped them to create a tiled efffect. The birds at the back inside were made out of newspaper and cellotape with a beak out of card, I then ripped little pieces of cute napkins up and glued them on top in a paper mache style. The other birds which were my favourite to make were made from using a polystyrene egg as the body and taped newspaper as the head. I then sewed felt on top covering the whole piece and then I added smaller cut up pieces for the detail of the feathers, beads for the eyes, wire feet and pipe cleaner for the beak. Netting was used inside of the 'bird house' too and when everything was glued into place, the bird house was glued onto the fabric that was earlier printed on and then put tightly into a frame.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this post and that it has inspired you to create something like this.

Have a nice day!

Abigail x