Final swatch boards...

Unfortunately I haven't been able to update my blog as I did my final 8 swatches... but now I'll just have a super long post explaining why I picked these 8.

So for the colour boards I covered my mounting boards in brown paper and then I tea stained a strip of paper and burnt around the edges. I did this so my fabric boards match my mood and colour boards and continue to give the same mood. I then cut rectangles out of the boards and placed the swatches behind the frames to give clean edges to my swatches.

So the swatch on the right.... I covered strips of wadding in different colour material. I then stitched them onto a piece of wadding and then used the sowing machines to draw lines down the strips and pinched every second triangle t give this bow effect.

The swatch on the left is North American Smocking in a lattice pattern. I picked this type of smocking for my mood boards as I feel its the most successful to show my theme.

With the swatch on the left I did double tucks with a zig-zag stitch down the middle. I burnt around the edges of the tucks to give and authentic feel.

The swatch on the left is rope tied in a square grid shape, I then painted the rope and covered it in latex to hold it in place. I burnt holes in a piece of material and stitched it to a piece of Hessian and then stitched the rope grid on top. I layered these three on top of each other to give the effect of peeling and layering.

With this swatch on the left I cut strips of material and sowed a line down the centre using a sowing machine. I then pulled a piece of the thread to gather the material. I then burnt around the edges for two reasons... 1: to give the idea of ageing and 2: to stop the material from fraying at the sides.

For the swatch on the right I spray painted a piece of rug mesh and cut strips of material and simply weaved it through the grid to create this pattern

 The swatch on the left was my attempt at shibori... but because my material wasn't natural the beads had to be left in to hold the form. I them painted the individual buttons to create a square grid pattern.

My right swatch was fairly simple... I covered strips of wadding in my material and hand stitched them together to create this diamond shape pattern.

-Sinéad