I’m now about two weeks ahead on the book blog, and have come to the section on generating new designs from existing ones. It’s really forced me to think about how an existing design can be adapted.
I started with SCAMPER, which is a tool used by designers to create new designs from old. It’s well explained here, so I’m not going to go into detail about it in this post. I didn’t feel that all of it applied to craft, however, so I devised my own list of techniques, partially based on SCAMPER:
- Substitute. This is probably the most commonly used method in craft. Basically you take an existing project and swap out one aspect of the project, substituting something else: a different material, a different color, a different pattern.
- Add a technique. Combine two techniques in a new way. Take a woven project and embroider it, or paint it.
- Eliminate or elaborate. Either strip the design down to basics or make it completely baroque. See what you come up with. Then try something in between.
- Use for a different purpose. Can a quilt be a baby carrier? Can it become a shawl, or a jacket?
- Rearrange elements. Change the locations of embellishments, rotate the pattern, flip it mirror-image.
Since there are five of them, I’m trying to figure out how to name these so they fit the acronym REUSE. Wouldn’t that be cool? If you can figure out how to do it, drop me a line or leave a comment!
I’ve also decided on the examples for this series of posts. I’m going to use quilts! It’s easy to swap out colors, materials, etc. for quilt blocks (and can make quite a difference if you do!), and the simpler quilt blocks are also quick and easy to make, so I can do my examples in a day or two. This is much better than trying to work in woven examples, because setting up the loom to weave all the examples would take way longer than I’ve got. It also provides some diversity in craft examples.
So the next few days, I’ll be working on designing and making my examples using pieced quilt blocks. Since I haven’t quilted outside of my foundation piecing class a few months back, I’m going to work with a very simple design from a book titled Singular Sensations: 14 Great quilts from one simple block, by Barbara Douglas. It’s quick and easy to assemble, and can be strip-pieced, making production even faster. I’ll use my own designs instead of hers, of course, but the basic block is marvelously adaptable. Hopefully it will let me churn out enough samples in time!
A parting question: How do you approach adapting a design? What techniques or methods do you use?
My first refuge is to overdye. Here’s an example. I wove a warp of 5 Tencel shawls in a rather complex stripe pattern. I had 14 colors of Tencel. I kept the colors in the same order as I created the stripes across the warp, but the width of each stripe was random. I thought the shawls were gorgeous (and ingeniously designed). The buying public? Not so much. Two of the shawls sold right away (the two best, of course). The remaining 3 languished through exhibit after exhibit in our gallery.
Time to break out the dyes. I stretched the shawls out on my dye table and painted on colors, more or less randomly. The stripes, of course, showed through, but their colors changed. This would be perfect, I thought. I batched the shawls, rinsed (and rinsed and rinsed) them, and hung them to dry.
They were hideous. The painted on colors were blotchy and ugly. Time to try another technique. I took one shawl & scrunch-dyed it, using my go-to color (gold) as the overdye to the overdye. Better, but still not sellable as a shawl. Time to repurpose.
I ironed a very lightweight interfacing to one side of the shawl (Tencel doesn’t take well to being cut and sewn; it needs to be stabilized first), and used the resulting fabric in a pieced cloth (see: Daryl Lancaster’s method for using scraps in piecing) to make into a carryall bag. The stripes (now very much in the background) showed through the many colors that had been applied to the cloth. The black strips that I used to cover the seams set off the pieces just the amount they needed–enough to let each piece showcase itself while allowing the cloth as a whole to blend.
Result: I’ve made two bags so far and have enough scraps left for a third. Each time I’ve entered one into a gallery show, it has flown off the shelves within days. After a lot of work on my striped shawls, the buying public finally said, “You got it right this time!”
Thanks! What this is saying to me is that design is an evolutionary process…swapping and changing design elements according to what works and what doesn’t, and experimenting when something isn’t working to find ways in which it does. More to chew on…!
On the acronym, if the order doesn’t matter you’re almost there. Instead of Add a technique Extend techniques. Rearrange. Done
Awesome. Hadn’t thought about “Extend”. If the acronym still works after incorporating Bonnie’s thoughts, indeed Done! 🙂
This approach seems timid when applied to weaving. Suppose you see something you like in a weaving magazine or an exhibit. Instead of looking for places to add something (beads, surface design), I suggest a serious look at the photographs or the finished piece. What draws you to this piece? How can you use the best aspects and go further with those? Is there something that is not as pleasing? Could you replace that part?
“Add a technique” is one way to add something. We can also add or subtract something from the chosen design, staying within one technique. Maybe the original has a border and a main part. Add a transition, or take off the border and develop a new one, or enlarge the scale of the best part to emphasize it. I think “add or subtract” would be better.
I do this with weaving drafts, especially my own drafts that I have used and liked. How could I modify this draft and make it more appropriate for the next warp? First I decide what I like best about the threading. Maybe one segment appeals strongly. I select and copy that part to a new draft. Do I still like the way it moves? Where can I take it next? Given the desired width of the fabric and then number of ends per inch, I already know how many warp ends will be on my loom. I design the draft so it looks good with this number of threads.
Some years ago, somebody took a distinctive draft from one of my workshop handout booklets and wove a scarf. She put beads on the fringes. Handwoven published her scarf recipe and included “inspired by a workshop with Bonnie Inouye”. Now I understand how she saw this as “inspired by”- she had seen a woven sample, purple warp and white weft. She wove the same cloth in different colors and added beads at the ends. So she was designing a scarf. Another weaver might follow the recipe in the magazine but use different colors and omit the beads. I would hope for more originality but this is a way to begin.
Thanks, Bonnie, for the very insightful comment! I like your train of thought and will see if I can figure out how to incorporate it, especially the part about analyzing the object and picking out the best aspects – strategizing what to add/remove rather than just changing things at random. (It also means I’ll have to rethink the examples for this section to show evolution of ideas rather than simply the effect of changes – much harder but I think also more useful, both to me and to the reader.)
Thank you!
Like Judy says, E for Extend, but I’d also reorganize a bit
* Rearrange elements. Change the locations of embellishments, rotate the pattern, flip it mirror-image.
* Eliminate. Strip down to basics. Simplify.
* Use for a different purpose. Can a quilt be a baby carrier? Can it become a shawl, or a jacket?
* Substitute. This is probably the most commonly used method in craft. Basically you take an existing project and swap out one aspect of the project, substituting something else: a different material, a different color, a different pattern.
* Extend or elaborate. Make the design baroque. Add a whole new technique like surface design to weaving, beads to knitting. Multiply the embellishments or magnify the pattern.
“Eliminate” may not seem like a spur to creativity, but it’s probably most useful in conjunction with rearrange and extend — a process of elaborating then eliminating will arrive at a very different design than the original.