My felt Sanctuary

Throughout the last term i have concentrated as hard as i could on my drawing skills and on the delivery of my design ideas to the tutors. That was something that they wanted me to improve on for this term and apparently i did something right because they seemed to like my work...even if i couldn't explain the meaning behind it very well.

The last project i did was based around the idea of sanctuary and peoples perception of sanctuary. Everyone in all the floors had to fill in a questionnaire answering questions like "What do you seek sanctuary from?" when we finished all the finished sheets were passed around the classes and became the basis for our brief. I had to respond to what the person had written in their questionnaire and collect a selection of images that reflected the brief.

My selection of images

Then i had to create a portable sanctuary informed by the collage of images. In my brief the person wrote alot about being by the seaside and the feeling of the clothes of people close to her so i decided to work with natural materials. Namely felt (£22 worth of felt) and pebbles. First i glued felt pieces directly onto stones trying to soften the rough surface and then made some small paintings.



I developed this with the use of a sewing machine i recently bought and started to encase entire stones in felt. In all i think i spent around 4 days of sewing pebbles into felt but i was really happy with the results and i think that they fit the brief perfectly. In total i made around 15 encased pebbles and decided to put them back into their natural surroundings to highlight the 'roots' of the object inside the felt, then photographed them for my final piece.



The image above is the one i used as a 'final product' for this project. Since the beginning of the year i haven't really been happy with the outcome of any of my projects, but this is the only project which resulted in a design that i like! I hope i can make things like this on the side of my projects when i specialise...im not sure but i have a feeling that most things will result in a conceptual idea and nothing that is material, i guess only time will tell!