M9 - An excerpt...

I have finally got back into my Rhodec course properly after graduating from my business degree. I have finished a few assignments and have been getting good marks so I thought I'd put up an excerpt from my M9 assignment to give you guys some ideas...

Fabric C: Lustrell Basket Weave ‘Licorice’

Lustrell Basket Weave is an unusual fabric with a smooth shiny finish. The texture appears to be created through pressing a design into the fabric, as opposed to an actual weave. This fabric is produced by Warwick Fabrics, and is available in six colourways; Licorice (dark brown-black), Hazel (a mid-tone brown), Henna (red-brown), Pearl (cream), Rum (black) and Russett (red-black). It is 140cm wide with a weight of 881gsm. This textile’s dominant factor would be its artificial texture; as a plastic fabric it has no weave.

This textile is 82% PVC, 2% Pu and 16% Polyester, making it extremely heavy duty. Although it would be the perfect choice for heavy duty commercial upholstery, it’s not suitable for drapery due to its heavy handle. Lustrell Basket Weave has a Martindale result of 150,000 cycles, much higher than the other fabrics used here.
Despite its plastic feel, the fabric passes the Schildnecht test for flexing in both length and width. With a colourfastness test greater than seven, Lustrell Basket Weave could be used outside, although it should be protected from direct sunlight. Despite its suitability as a commercial textile, it should be used with care due to its high ignitability index of eighteen. Positively, it does have a low spread of flame index (at zero) and heat evolved index of three.

To keep this fabric in its best condition, it can be wiped down regularly with warm water and should never be cleaned with abrasives or detergent based cleaners. It should also be kept away from direct heat sources.

Lustrell Basket Weave would be perfect in a high use commercial area such as a restaurant or nightclub, due to its high durability and ease of cleaning spills.

Some ideas for M7

I just realised that after all my talk about ideas for M7 I never showed you my finished product! I eventually decided to keep it simple in an off-white so the hall could update their look regularly. I found a lot of community halls I saw used strong colours like orange, maroon, blues and greens. This is fine while the colours are fashionable but date so quickly - a community hall doesn't have the money to update their paint colours every season!

Here is my moodboard which I created to inspire my final design.

And my final sampleboard:

I thought I'd also share some of Richard's comments for anyone else's benefit. He said to include the title to presentations like these in the lower right corner, since work is typically found to the left or top (I had my title on the back). He alo said to consider the wider community for supplies, sponsorship and sewing.

He also commented that he liked my use of varied and interesting types of paint. I chose to look at a metallic paint, milk paint, 'venetian glaze' and low VOC paint. Of course there are many interesting varnishes and stains as well - personally, I chose not to use one as I couldn't get an appropriate sample.

Some of the main paint suppliers in Australia include:

Dulux: http://www.dulux.com.au/
Taubmans: http://www.taubmans.com.au/
British Paints: http://www.britishpaints.com.au/
Nippon: http://www.nipponpaint.com.au/
Wattyl: http://www.wattyl.com.au/
Resene: http://www.resene.com.au/
Designer Paint Company: http://www.designerpaintco.com/
Haymes: http://www.haymespaint.com.au/
Porter's Original Paints: http://www.porterspaints.com.au/

Of course there are many small producers that make specialised products - do some careful research and you are sure to find some fantastic products you've never seen before.

Fabrics

I've started reading Fabrics by Marypaul Yates and its going to be very useful as a student and a design professional.

The chapters cover the following:

• Aesthetics (Colour, Lighting, Texture, Pattern)
• Sustainable Design
• Fibres & Yarns (Great for M8!)
• Fabric Structure (Wovens, Embroidered, Vinyl, Laces etc)
• Fabric Designs
• Colour Application (Colourfastness, Dyeing etc)
• Finishing & Treatment
• Fabric Applications
• Performance, Testing & Flaws
• The Fabric Industry (Designer's Sources, Fabric Manufacture, Role of fabric designers)
• Professional Practices (Fabric selection, specification, costs and budgets)

There's also lots of close-up's of fabric types, weaves and styles and a full glossary at the back of the book. The only complaint I have is some of the interior pictures seem a little too traditional, but that's just personal taste.

I thought I'd include some of the glossary definitions relating to fibres which I haven't seen in the Rhodec texts.

• Filament fibres are produced in a continuous form, which results in a smooth character e.g. silk.
• Staple fibres, such as cotton, wool, linen, are naturally produced not in a continuous form like silk, but in ‘cut’ lengths that vary from plant to plant, or animal to animal.
• Texturized, air-texturized or air-entangled yarns are synthetic filaments that have a mechanically achieved rough surface.
• Plied yarn consists of one or more strands of finished yarn twisted together.
• Bulk describes a yarn’s appearance of fullness with respect to its weight.
• Loft refers to a yarn’s springiness and resilience to its bulk when squeezed.
• Dimensional stability refers to a material’s ability to retain its shape and size after use or cleaning.
  

After all that work, it's nice to have a little eye candy of beautiful fabrics...

Textiles

I've started research for M8 and M9 on textiles and fabrics. I have ordered 'Fabrics' by Marypaul Yates. I'll let you know if its worth the money!

Apart from that I've had some difficulty finding technical information on the web. The few sites I've found so far are:

'Textile Information' (http://textileinformation.blogspot.com/). They recently did a post about the classification of fibres, including this quick reference.


Encyclopedia.com (http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/textiles.aspx) has some basic info.

Of course, Wikipedia also has some good basic articles:

Textiles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile
Silk - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk
Linen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen
Synthetic Fibres - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fibre
Wool - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wool

'Natural Fibres' (http://www.binhaitimes.com/) has information on a lot of the plant and animal fibres mohair, flax, jute, wool, silk, and ramie.

'Fibre2fashion' (http://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/7/688/plant-and-animal-fibres1.asp) also has an article on plant & animal fibres

Please share if you know of any good websites or books. By clicking on comments at the bottom of the post you can leave messages and you don't have to be a member of Google.

Paint

As we all know, paint is an incredibly versatile material in the interior. Apart from fabric, it's a material that can adopt as many textures or colours as you want. The best part is, it's available in all the colours of the rainbow!

Purple


Blue



Green

Yellow

Orange

Red

Timber

There are so many ways timber can be used in an interior - be it residential or commercial. Here's a few pics to get you inspired...

Database Help

So I've found a few links to help you set up your database in Access.

Microsoft has a sample database you can download to practise the different things available - it's great to have a sample to get ideas and work out how someone else did it! Visit it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C6661372-8DBE-422B-8676-C632D66C529C&displaylang=en

This site has a list of examples by Microsoft as well:
http://www.databasedev.co.uk/samples_and_downloads.html

About.com has a lot of information on how databases work in general, as well as tips and instructions for Access. This particular page shows you some basic fundamentals.
http://databases.about.com/od/access/l/aaaccess1.htm

Please let me know if you find any other useful sources of information when creating your database so I can let everybody know.

Creating a database contd.

I have written the next set of instructions for creating your own database. These show you how to create 'forms' which are much easier to look at than tables, and what I use in my own database.

The screen shots don't appear large enough on the blog so please email me if you would like a copy (anna.r.williams@hotmail.com).

Bricks & Conrete

M4 was one of my favourite assignments - I love the contemporary (and traditional) effects you can achieve with brick. These are some of favourite interiors.

Below is a very subtle way to incorporate brick, just sand back the paint a touch to let a little of the rustic red through.

Creating a Database

I noticed a few posts on the Rhodec Bulletin Board discussing the options for making a database. I had the same issue when I started and was horrified at the thought of spending $300 on a program. I once worked at a medium-size business with 7 employees that used Access as their working database and it was very successful - particularly because as the business grew the database could be changed to suit their needs. So I've created my database (with quite a lot of swearing and frustration!) and I thought I would offer a few tips on how it was achieved to make it a little easier for someone else.

It was much too long to put up in a post and you can't see the screen shots properly but if you email me (anna.r.williams@hotmail.com) I'll send you the full word doc.

Please let me know if you have any trouble, I'm happy to answer questions. Here's a little pic of my database to help you get inspired:

Cane Furniture

I have always despised pretty much anything that included cane and chair in the same sentence, however my Mum recently purchased a rather beautiful contemporary cane armchair for the verandah. We also have an old cane lounge which looks much better rotting and covered in roses in the garden bed than it ever did inside.

Despite all this, M7 (Paint) discusses a community hall containing cane furniture. So I thought I'd find some pictures of what the furniture could look like before decorating:











The chairs I have most commonly seen around my area are the two directly above so I think I will assume my furniture is similar to one of these styles.


Now the inspiration:



I think the above is beautiful but not exactly suitable to modernise a community hall?



Painting everything white or black would give unity to mismatched sets and provide a fresh clean base for further decorating.

I like the black is a more modern alternative to painting the chairs white.

Wallpaper Sampleboards

This is my sampleboard for the M6 wallpaper assignment. The wallpaper is a gorgeous red and gold paper by Julien MacDonald. Its the first sample board I've made so it took a while to work out how it should go. I wanted to make an intimate, exotic bedroom and this is how it turned out.

My second sampleboard is based around a Super Fresco Texture paper called Solitude White. I noted some ideas in the last post but this is the final board. You can't see this one too well but a lot of the items are shown in the last post.

Room Ideas for Wallpaper

(Ideas for rooms based on wallpaper - Assignment M6)

Wallpaper 1: Solitude White by Super Fresco Textures

Considering a cool colour palette to make the room soothing. I want to use colour, but neutral colours. The colours don't work very well when scanned but they are pale grey, two shades of dusty purple & black. Cream and some timber will add warmth to stop the room feeling cold. Still need to work out some black accents for a little drama.

Colours:

A neutral toned rug over wooden floors (rug by Robyn Cosgrove rugs):

Furniture:

I would upholster two of these chairs with a soft grey (by Carina Sherlock).

Upholster the couch in this fabric (Duckcloth.com):

Sofa by Orson & Blake

Side table by Bridgette Forestier
Cabinet by Baxter

Lighting:

A contemporary chandelier to add some sparkle (by Brand von Egmond)

Cushion fabrics

(From left: Ananya Snow fabric by Warwick, Blossom cushion from Rapee cushions & Metropolitan cushion from Rapee cushions)

Possible accent pieces & art

(from freeformsusa.com)





The colours come out strange for this piece of textile art. It's mostly shades of purple & grey with a few other colours thrown in. Artist: Sarah Symes.