Art and Design A comprehensive guide for creative artists - Aaltodoc

Exercise
1. By using found materials and objects from the
surroundings of your school construct one set of woven
table mats to be used on a serving table for guests. The
executed functional weave must be made by choosing
only one basic technique from the provided list:
Plain weave or Twill weave.
2. Construct a multi coloured weave using one of these
techniques: Crotchet or Ghiordes knots. Suggest a theme
or purpose for the type of weave you have created.
3. The community leaders in your area have discovered
that recycling plastics during weaving is another way of
shifting the burden to the next generation. Find a new
material from plants and produce a sizable mat, which
will be used in the area medical centre by visitors and
caretakers of the sick.
4. The environmentally concerned clubs of students
at your school have become fully aware that plastic
drinking straws from soft-drink bottles are carelessly
disposed or thrown away and now the school is
looking for a basket to carry gifts for a visiting local
leader responsible for Community Culture and the
Environment.
Construct a decorated basket for the stated objective.
5. Our easy addiction to plastic or polythene bags is
destroying the environment. Design and produce a
new type of shopping bag to replace polythene bags.
Use one technique of non-woven interlaces that will
serve the intended purpose.
6. Young mothers in your community have lost their
babies because they do not know how to keep them
warm. Produce a woven baby shawl to be used as a
blanket for solving the problem.
Choose one weaving equipment for that purpose
• A back strap loom
• A rigid heddle loom
CHAPTER TEN
Fabric decoration
Fabric decoration is the art of embellishing cloth or fabric
for pleasant appearances.
Digolo & Mazrui (1990, 61) define “fabric design/decoration”
as “the patterning of an essentially plain fabric to render it
more appealing or to serve a particular purpose.” Hence,
the learner of fabric decoration should not only be given
the fundamental skills of depicting creative and artistic
enhancements—on the surface of a fabric—for various
intended aims. They can also learn about altering fabrics
by sewing, it is also an approach typically used to decorate
fabrics. Other methods include dyeing, bleaching, starching,
waxing, printing and sewing.
In Uganda, the antiquities or ancient past of fabrics starts
from tribal people such as Baganda, Banyoro and Basoga
who used bark cloth for clothing, interior decorations,
protection from bad weather by covering their naked
bodies and very many other purposes.
According to Nakazibwe (2005, 4), “less attention has been
paid to ... bark-cloth, a fabric ... that predates the technology
of weaving.” Here we see that, well as there are still several
tribes actively making bark cloth as part of their traditional
costume not many have gone ahead to decorate it.
In Uganda, “It has been speculated that the direct trade
relations between the Swahili-Arabs and the Baganda
resulted in the cross-cultural transfer of ideas and skills
in fabric decoration, which later translated into the
patterning of bark-cloth, initially exclusively, for royal usage.”
(Nakazibwe 2005, 396)
This presents the value of promoting cross-cultural
understanding by the people who used bark cloth. It also
led to the discovery of more ways of decorating fabrics,
which we wear today for distinctive purposes.
Literally, some sources suggest that decorated bark cloth
existed in other parts of Africa. Art from Africa (2008) an on
line source is more enlightening: “The Mbuti Pygmies of Ituri
forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, similarly made
bark cloth by beating tree barks, which they later decorated
with organic pigments.”
162 163