Costumes and Textiles

Over the summer months the project will turn its focus on the costume and textile collection. Costume collection manager Georgina Bradley introduced participants to the gallery and explained the history of the collection, which was started in the 1970s. Guided by Georgina and textile artist Claire Buckley, participants were able to explore the exhibits including the current temporary display ‘Common Threads’.

Studying textiles from the handling collection

Margaret and Lynne studying displays in the costume gallery

Following the gallery tour Claire led an object handling session of textile items relating to designs and materials in the museum collection. Participants were encouraged to focus on the material construction, texture and feel of the materials.

This was followed by a workshop activity where Claire introduced a variety of paper types to the group. By crushing, folding and tearing the paper, and dampening with water the different qualities of the paper types became apparent. This proved to be an interesting and enjoyable introduction to the properties of material fibres.

Examining the properties of types of paper

Angela discovering how cotton rag paper performs

Continuing to explore materials and their fibres, in this second workshop Claire used some of the items from the costume collection as examples to introduce the participants to the technique of wool felting.

Loose fibre woollen pullover

Teasing the wool fibres apart

Spanish felted fedora hat

Each were given pieces of unspun wool, called ‘rovings’ and shown how to tease the materials fibres apart to obtain a light and loosely bound clump of wool. Using wet and soapy hands participants discovered how to roll the wool clump together to form a solid felt ball. The process was then repeated using different coloured ‘rovings’ to produce marbled results.

The wool teasing process can be assisted with hand tools known as ‘carders’, a type of flat headed brush with short wire prongs. After a demonstration by Claire, participants were able to have a go at ‘carding’ the wool, achieving good results.

Ray getting good 'carding' results

Elva 'carding' the wool

The following session progressed the felt making process to produce larger cylindrical objects. Layers of teased or carded wool were rolled back and forth against a flat mat surface producing a carrot shaped length of felt. By using varying colours of wool layers and incorporating lengths of woollen strands, multi coloured results were achieved, similar in design to a stick of rock. Quite fitting to our seaside location.