Nottingham Lace Part III

In the afternoon session of the workshop we camped down in the University's fantastic embroidery workshop, which is packed full of all manner of wonderful embroidery machines, from the hand and foot operated to the latest digital technology. The purpose of the session was to translate elements of the work we created in the morning into embroidered samples. To record the sounds that the machines made as we created each piece. For many people it was the first time they'd worked with several of the machines, so it was interesting to see how people threw themselves into that opportunity, grappling with each machine and learning about what was possible.







I'll post a sample of sounds in the next update.

I'd like to thank Katherine and Tom for inviting me up to Nottingham, and to everyone who took part in the day; for bringing such a wonderful selection of objects, sharing their stories and their imaginations and for throwing themselves into the workshop with such enthusiasm. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what we can do next with some of the ideas, work and connections we started.

Nottingham Lace - part II

Just before the afternoon session, we created another collective pixel drawing piece. Each person drew an element of their object, in pixel form, on the roll of graph paper, and within a time limit of 2 minutes. They then moved round to the next drawing and continued to add another element from their object to that existing drawing. This continued until each person had contributed to each drawing. The result was one collective piece, comprising of thirteen collectively made drawings.







The idea was then to take a sample of this and re-create it with the digital embroidery machine, turning the drawing into a new embroidered piece, and taking the hand made into the machine and the digital. And to take sound recordings of the machine creating the piece.

Here's a short video of the digital embroidery machine previewing how the piece will be created, turning the drawing into an animation of process.


And here's a video comprising extracts of the piece being created. I love the fact that at some points the machine is creating sections in 4/4 time, the tempo increasing or decreasing depending on the length of stitch.



A huge thanks to Tessa for all her expertise and assistance helping us to translate and create this piece.