I’ve just been looking through some of my photographs and thought I would share with you some images of my designs from over the past couple of years. My collections have been heavily influenced by my travels and drawing comparisons from how the places I have visited look now in comparison to how they were in the past. This theme has always been a fun challenge, trying to research old photographs which show the same places I have images from, but it is very interesting. Cities and towns such as Las Vegas, San Fransisco, Williams and Wetherby were full of inspiration for my designs.
To translate this theme into my woven designs I work around using the idea of contrasting traditional and contemporary fibres, colours and pattern drafts so that my fabrics draw influence from both the past and the present. I used a lot of wool in my fabrics as it is such a well established versitile fibre, which has been used in textiles for centuries and there are a lot of old wool textile mills near my home in the UK. I retained this principle when I decided to make fashion accessories from my fabrics and showcased them on old wooden step ladders and crates to create a modern vintage feel. The styles of the handbags and neck scarfs were carefully selected to tie in with my theme; I wanted styles that you could imagine would be fashionable 40-50-60 years ago but would also be fabulous today!
I created the camera case bag by upcycling one which belonged to my mums grandad which was very old and battered, weaving nylon pattern pieces to cover all the components and then reassembling it all and repeated a similar process with an old bottle bag. It was a really fun, difficult challenge and something you could think about trying!
I love weaving and drawing and hope that you like and understand my concept for my designs and if you would like to see more check out http://www.rachelcrooksdesign.com My collection gathered some lovely attention from some big highstreet brands when I exhibited at new designers and I would love to hear your thoughts on it as feedback is a great way to develop practice.
