Hainsworth

Sample book from 1913 in reception of Hainsworth

On Tuesday I went to Hainsworth in Leeds to pick up the most beautiful fabric for my piece.  The fabric is called 'face cloth'.  It has a smooth nap to it and a felt like texture.  It seems like the kind of baize fabric you find on a snooker table.  Its got a remarkable sheen and feels amazing.

Hainsworth have very kindly sponsored the piece.  They have a long and prestigious history of making woollen cloth, for example they have been supplying the British Army the fabric for 'Redcoats' since Waterloo.  however they aren't stuck in the past; they have a very forward thinking research centre and also make innovative fabrics as well as those more traditional ones.  Many thanks to June Hill and Diane Simpson for setting this up.

Whilst I was waiting in Reception for my fabric I looked through one of the their sample book from 1913.  This is a page of reds.

My fabric is grey.  The colour  reminds me of a wet bandsman standing at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, maybe because it might be the same fabric as his coat.  Its beautiful, really beautiful.

Its also huge.  I cut the first 5m lengths yesterday and it did nearly fill my living room.

The pressure is on.  I hope I can do justice to this fabric.

Taking the P wave



detail of one of the samples bearing the satin ECG

Okay now I don't want to get too technical on this but you might remember the post about the ECG data http://www.karinathompsontextiles.blogspot.co.uk/2013_01_01_archive.html
The ECG had 3 lines of data.  My technical adviser (Nicky) suggested that if I was to use a single line that it should be the bottom line as that was coherent throughout the run.  It clearly shows what my heart was doing from rest to peak to post-run.
I started cleaning up the data and programming part of it into a lovely 4mm wide satin embroidery.  After a couple of technical problems I finally could stitch it out in a way that I was happy.  I could repeat it and build it into lengths in a way that I will do on the final piece.  I was really happy with the results.

I could stitch the wave form out over the reprogrammed footprints and over densely stitched echocardiogrammes.  It felt like the piece was finally taking shape; it was looking really lovely

However working on the other 2 wave forms I suddenly realised that I had actually left out part of a heart beat and that every other beat had no P-wave.  That would be pretty serious if my heart was really doing that!  No points for attention to detail.......

Data: the scientific approach

So what did I learn last week......in terms of the heart data there wasn’t any real surprises.  According to my heart monitor my average heart rate was 175bpm with a high of 183bpm.  This was what I expected and was consistent with the data from the ECG run in January.  The image above is sheet of notes showing the timings from my monitor called out to June and Hannah in the Lobby and the data the heart monitor/stopwatch recorded.

However the running gait was quite different.  I had laid out 2 x 20m and 2 x 40m lengths of lining paper in the Lobby.  During the run I ran on one of each of these lengths leaving beautiful prints from the dirt on the floor.   The delicate patterns embossed onto the tread patterns were printed clearly with the dirt of 160 years worth of dust.  However I fear that the delicate subtlety of the dirt on the paper wont translate easily into embroidery stitches.  As the prints were so clear after the run I inked up my trainers (Okay Hannah inked them) and I ran the steps again.

I deliberately waited until the second half of the run as I didn’t want fresh legs to give a longer than usual stride.   The big surprise is the length of my gait.  I had done some simple measurements at home and had been working on the assumption that my gait, particularly when I was tiring, was around 85cms.  However measuring my 'dirt' prints my gait  is between 115-130cms.

This means around 82 steps in a 100m embroidery.

The Run

Me doing the run.  It look like it's hard work....which it was
Photo credit: Hannah Coaten

On Monday I finally ran the mile and a half that represents an hour’s worth of wool production.

It was strange to finally do the run after all the false starts with the weather.  I had also been poorly with a bad cough that meant that I could do the training I wanted to.  BUT it wasn’t a race it was an exercise in data capture; this is the information that would dictate the nature of my piece for Cloth and Memory 2.

There were only two other people in the room curator, June Hill up one end and embroiderer and photographer, Hannah Coaten up the other.  I had an heart monitor on and they recorded my heart rate and lap times at each end.

Not scaring myself

I have been doing some sampling.  Okay I haven't got all the heart data that I want AND the programming of footprints that I have done are from prints from my old Asics NOT my lovely new Asics that I will run in at Salts Mill, but I need to get started and see if my theory of how to solve some of the physical problems that I am going to have to overcome if I am going to make an embroidery 100m long.

One of the biggest worries for me is the physicality of handling big bits of fabric; where I can lay it out to measure and cut it; how it might handle under the machine; how I will know where footprints and heartbeats will go.
I have had a go.  Admittedly these initial pieces are only 2.5m but when together they are coming in at 5m which is the size that I am planning on working on....and most importantly that length fits very comfortably in my living room so it should work.  I do however have to roll the rug back for the photo but that's small stuff!

13 Anonymous women

Okay in case you thnk I have been slacking.......
I have been working on a proposal for Tatton Park, a country house south of Manchester with a great reputation for contemporary art.  I won the chance to put forward a proposal for a piece of site specific art work telling the stories of the servant's at Tatton.  Its part of a bigger project called Hidden Histories that is about the servant's lives rather than the grand family that they worked for.
My proposal uses this photogrpah as a starting point. its undated and unannotated so all these people are anonymous; we can make some educated guesses at to who some of them are but we will never know the majority;they weren considered 'important enough'.  It will explore the 13 anonymous women in this photograph by looking at the repairs and laundrymarks on the household linen, and the inventory entries in household paperwork.  the plan is for a bedcover and a 'mended sheet' as well as portraits of the women
Here is one of the samples.....I have been busy

Half hearted




Half stitched out echocardiogram of my heart.  you can see the frame and the clips used to hold the fabric in place

 

Those of you who know me, know that I use a Pfaff sewing machine kindly sponsored by VSM UK Ltd (thanks Mike). Now I am not going to get all Jeremy Clarkson about it but it has got one of the biggest hoops on the market.  However to use that hoop you need to 'break' your design into two halves.

Its a simple thing to do if you know what to do before you stitch out and you get an even better effect if you split it when its a design, rather than an embroidery file.  However this piece is at such a preliminary stage I have programmed a couple of footprints but for the large scale samples I just increased the size of an existing heart scan embroidery file.  The software automatically split it down the middle and the result is half hearted in all senses