Miss Nelson (Art and Textiles Teacher)

Textile students are continuing to do amazing work around sustainability in the development of their final pieces at both A2, IB and GCSE. Daisy Minney (Upper Sixth) has, as part of her A2 coursework, been exploring natural dying and produced a final smocked garment dyed with asparagus!  Olivia Ames (who is now in her first year studying Fashion Technology at University of Leeds; a degree that allows students to consider and overcome the many sustainability challenges in fashion) developed her final year textiles using eco-printing which involved her transferring leaf dyes to cloth and rust dying; resulting in a beautiful bodice being made for her final piece supported by an A* sketchbook. 

Students are also keen to raise awareness of the various eco-challenges facing our planet in their textile work. Last year’s Lower Sixth, Xindi Anderson and Neve O’Brien created statement pieces in order to raise awareness about pollution and the damage it is doing to our environment. Both students used plastic (cutting up plastic bottles to embellish and fusing recycled plastic to create patterns on fabric) on their garments to highlight the problem of plastic waste. Supporting sketchbooks developing their responses to this problem through written research and visually through drawing.

IB Visual Arts student Joanna Solomon is currently experimenting with dyeing and printing fabric using the Sun to expose her images inspired by her brief: Life outside my window, in response to COVID and how the view outside her window denoted hope; the results are quite surreal.  Being reliant on the weather has its frustrations as our lessons are not always scheduled when it is sunny!  But these challenges are very much part of working sustainably and the students are learning to be more organic in their work and the results are stunning! 

View some of the pieces and sketch books HERE.