FLOWERY SPEECH, a weave and knit collection by Alexandra Jean Auger
created in London, 2024, under Central Saint Martins BA Textile Design
FLOWERY SPEECH is about the breakdown of communication; the space between a phrase’s intended meaning and its interpretation.
Idioms are fun turns of phrase, but can be confusing or nonsensical, even to native speakers of the language. In the year since moving from North America to England I’ve often found myself caught in slight misunderstandings, despite ‘speaking the same language’, and despite a lifetime of avid consumption of English books, movies, music, and television. A classmate asking to borrow a rubber – which is a condom in Canada or in the States – for the first-time is a particular instance I’ll laugh about forever. Here I’ve picked a bouquet of floral idioms. I’ve heard and used all of them all of my life but realised through this project I didn’t quite know some of their meanings.
Source visuals were photographed at Columbia Road Flower Market and then degraded and abstracted through a variety of digital and manual processes, including pixelation, long exposure, blurring, shredding, collage, intentional water staining, and more. I have aimed to reproduce this sense of distortion and juxtaposition in my knitting and weaving through varied materials and techniques, including fuzzy and handmade yarns, beading (seed beads), purposely askew inlays, neon-bright embroidery, and sublimation photographic printing on the heat press.
I hope to have developed a diverse collection that amounts to more than just “flowery speech”, which UsingEnglish.com explains as “full of lovely words, but lacking substance”. The idea is that an interesting design can be appreciated by any, apart from language; interpretation open to the individual.
For all inquiries, please contact alexandrajeanauger@gmail.com
 GARDEN VARIETY a double cloth structure with many many inlays - mohair, alpaca, cello, sublimation printed chenille, acrylic, on gold and white polyester warp |  NO BED OF ROSES a sublimation printed sleep-or-waking top with 1x1 cabled subtle lettering and seed beaded straps, polyester to be attempted in silk |  LAST STRAW double cloth, pockets stuffed with all of this project’s leftovers, mohair, alpaca and trash on white and gold polyester warp, made a ‘yarn’ out of a carrier bag and another out of all my offcuts sandwiched between clear tape |
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 OOPS A DAISY a 'woven weaving', double cloth with digital embroidery, mohair on gold and white polyester warp |  SHRINKING VIOLET ii reversible cloth, sublimation printed chenille cut to size and laid in strip by strip, gold warp floats getting smaller and smaller |  SHRINKING VIOLET a kind of pressed flower, source image sized down to the point of total pixelation, lambswool and acrylic intarsia |
 GILD A LILY ii checkered cloth, gold on gold and individually laid in strands of sublimation printed vision nylon, white and gold polyester warp |  SEED MONEY handbag concept, felted lambswool intarsia panels with seed bead embellished lettering and strap |  GILD A LILY intarsia ribbed vest concept, an image of the flower market splintered with cracks of gold, lambswool and lurex |
 FLOWER OF THE FLOCK pale sublimation print on acrylic chenille, snipped and inlayed with alpaca, white and gold polyester warp |