As a woven textile designer, I am influenced by a deep appreciation for materials, process and the emotional connection textiles can create between people and place. Embedding meaning into my designs as they carry a narrative of life and memories. I also take inspiration from the natural landscape, seeing colour and textures which translate into pattern in weave. My work combines the traditional techniques of hand-weaving and screen printing. The process starts with artwork which I translate onto the loom using colour and geometric shape. I combine yarns in the weft, as I weave, transforming the look of plain weave and twills with slubbed yarns which undulate in the cloth, reminiscent of the organic lines of nature that inspired it. I have a passion for constructed textiles, finding the endless possibilities of yarn combinations and patterns exciting. I combine different fibres in my weaving, striving to use natural materials, particularly wool. Donegal Yarns has sponsored me for my graduate collection, in which I used their merino wool in a variety of rich colours. My graduate collection ‘Homeplace’ is inspired by my childhood growing up in a rural community, in the parish of Magheragall, Co. Antrim. With a focus on my connection to the countryside and my community, the colours came directly from the fields that surround me and the photos that show a thread of red which has run through my life, specifically our red front door; a backdrop for many family photos. To intertwine my community into my weaving I was influenced by signature quilts from my parish which recorded names of all those in the area in the 1890s, so I collected the signatures of all those in my church now, embedding them into my designs with a printed warp.Aesthetics and functionality are a major consideration within my graduate collection which is composed of double cloth and triple cloth samples, as I explored the three-dimensional properties of weave. The layers of cloth are stuffed, with waste wool from industry, to create three dimensional panels which could be used for acoustics, as they absorb sound, but equally would function as soft furnishings.
