10 7 / 2012
Cells by Laura Katherine McMillan
McMillan on her project:
I began this series of embroideries as a way to fuse my background studies in anatomy and kinesiology with my passion for textile art. Revisiting old text books brought back not just information I would have to memorize for its function but a wealth of beautiful imagery. I began to see the cells as a series of intricate textures and shapes.
Creating this series made me think about how our view of something as merely functional can overshadow its inherent beauty.
Permalink 116 notes
17 4 / 2012
Agustina Woodgate is an Argentinian-born artist now residing in Miami, FL. For the O, Miami poetry festival Woodgate “poetry bombed” thrift stores by sewing poems into the clothes. I found this to be a lighter take on shop dropping. Both the “traditional” form of shop dropping and Woodgate’s poetry bombing create an unexpected moment for the finder. However, instead of commenting on capitalism and/or production Woodgate’s mission is to displace poetry and create an unexpected and happy moment for the finder.
Permalink 1 note
03 4 / 2012
Research Survey - Please Participate!
Do you consider yourself a crafter? For one of my classes I had to design an online survey. This research survey will also help my master’s thesis research. If you consider yourself a crafter please participate! Thank you for your help! (AND it’s only 10 questions.)
Please reblog!
Thanks
Permalink 18 notes
31 3 / 2012
Making is Connecting: The 4-minute presentation (2012)
via Amazon’s Description:
In Making is Connecting, David Gauntlett argues that through making things, people engage with the world and create connections with each other. Both online and offline, we see that people want to make their mark on the world, and to make connections.
During the previous century, the production of culture became dominated by professional elite producers. But today, a vast array of people are making and sharing their own ideas, videos, and other creative material online, as well as engaging in real-world crafts, art projects, and hands-on experiences.
Gauntlett argues that we are seeing a shift from a ‘sit-back-and-be-told culture’ to a ‘making-and-doing culture’. People are rejecting traditional teaching and television, and making their own learning and entertainment instead. Drawing on evidence from psychology, politics, philosophy, and economics, he shows how this shift is necessary and essential for the happiness and survival of modern societies.
Permalink 1 note
15 3 / 2012
DIYcouture
DIYcouture is a fantastic project by Rosie Martin. Her empowering project is an answer to a fashion industry that is driven by a fictional narrative; one where all women are size 0 - 2 and have plenty of money to spend. Martin makes fashion more accessible by selling affordable instructions to clothes she designs, giving power to the consumer who ultimately creates their own garment.
text via DIYcouture:
DIYcouture has made two unusual clothing collections: rather than purchasing a garment, the DIYcouture customer purchases a set of simple, visual instructions, which enable them to make that garment themselves.
The instructions remove the need for complex sewing patterns. Diagrams and pictures take the maker through the creation process, so that unique, personally fitted pieces of clothing are accessible to anyone.
The DIYcouture collections are groups of simple, classic pieces that can be almost endlessly re-invented.
These form the seed of an infinite, mushrooming mega collection by a multitude of makers. Each of the pieces is a possibility brought to life again and again in a new incarnation by every person that chooses to sew it themselves.
Inspired by the thousands of invisible pairs of hands around the globe that make the clothes we buy, DIYcouture hopes to inspire people to get up to their elbows in the 3-dimensional world of creation. It supports the slow revolution. Helping people to produce garments that are precious, rather than disposable, this is the antithesis of fast-fashion.
Permalink 4 notes
29 2 / 2012
Slow Cloth
Image: Riding a Curve by Jude Hill, Hand/Eye Magazine
Elaine Lipson offers her poetic definition of Slow Cloth:
Joy - Slow Cloth has the possibility of joy in the process. In other words, the journey matters as much as the destination.
Contemplation - Slow Cloth offers the quality of meditation or contemplation in the process.
Skill - Slow Cloth involves skill and has the possibility of mastery.
Diversity - Slow Cloth acknowledges the rich diversity and multicultural history of textile art.
Teaching - Slow Cloth honors its teachers and lineage even in its most contemporary expressions.
Materials - Slow Cloth is thoughtful in its use of materials and respects their source.
Quality - Slow Cloth artists, designers, crafters and artisans want to make things that last and are well-made.
Beauty - It’s in the eye of the beholder, yes, but it’s in our nature to reach for beauty and create it where we can.
Community - Slow Cloth supports community by sharing knowledge and respecting relationships.
Expression - Slow Cloth is expressive of individuals and/or cultures. The human creative force is reflected and evident in the work.
Image: Coma as Measure of Persistence by Jude Hill, Hand/Eye Magazine
For more, read Lipson’s beautiful article in Hand/Eye Magazine: ‘Slow Cloth’
Elaine Lipson is a writer, editor, author, communications and content specialist, artist, and the creator of the Slow Cloth concept and philosophy of textile art, craft, design, and culture. She’s also written extensively on organic foods and related issues.
Permalink 5 notes
29 2 / 2012
Katherine May
Katherine May is a textile designer-maker based in London.
“My concerns for textile waste and fast fashion has taken me on a journey of patchwork and quilt making - it’s thrifty techniques and it’s history of collective making.”
text/image via Quilting: How to get started, The Telegraph:
Quilts do not have to conform to stereotypical images of faded florals suited to traditional country cottages. The contemporary 27-year-old textile designer Katherine May is creating four quilts for the Liberty show that turn most preconceptions upside down. Perhaps the most unusual is her quilt made from Barbie Doll and Action Man clothes, stitched together in a bold, free-form design with strong colours and an array of different materials. She collected hundreds of items of dolls’ clothing from car boot sales and eBay and created, in effect, a large collage backed with parachute material.
“I started quilting when I was 23 during the final year of my BA course at Chelsea Arts College,” Katherine says, “when I saw some beautiful, inspiring images of women quilting together in a circle.” She researched a little more and found some bold, expressive quilts, made by African-Americans in Alabama. Some had used fragments of denim work clothes, still with copper staining.
“I just loved that idea of recycling,” she says. “The many women who now come to my quilting workshops — who range from their twenties upwards — also love finding a use for those little bits of fabric you don’t want to throw away. There is a real mix of styles. A quilt is like a canvas to express yourself.”
via katherinemay.com:
The Pattern Project
January 4, 2012 / Projects
Subverting the feeling of a needle in a haystack – I locate the value in an environment full of expired meaning. A quiet action amongst the many hands and flow of conveyor belts in the textile recycling factory. I sift through the mountain, forming my own piles, finding fragments to join together with intimate hand stitches. An action that is opposite to the down grading process, of breaking down fibres to become stuffing and wipers, I deconstruct to reconstruct, through stitches, new meanings and value into the textiles. By sharing this process with others, the quiet action spreads, and becomes louder.
26 2 / 2012
Love & Thrift - The Local Cloth Project
via Love & Thrift:
Project: The Local Cloth Project
[During a short residency at the Harvest Worksroom in East Brunswick Vuletich aims] …to explore through textiles and cloth, larger ideas around quality and craftsmanship, emotional attachment to products, and what it means to feel connected to a place, a location and to a community of people.
“…Here at Harvest Textiles, I’m going to try to map these ideas of the local and what it means for Harvest and for the neighbourhood they exist in. In a way, this is a relatively easy site for investigation. Harvest are already a textile printing enterprise, who are aware of their ‘footprint’, and who have a positive impact socially (through their workshops and encouragement of local creatives). Also, the neighbourhood of East Brunswick, was actually the original site of most of Melbourne’s early textiles and garment production.
All of this is rich pickings for a design researcher. I have my new desk, and am sharing the space with a lovely group of people who are on the Summer School printing class for the week. You are welcome to come by and say hi if you are in the area and I would love to get any feedback or share a conversation about what local textiles means for you.”
About the Artist: Clara Vuletich is a printed textile designer and researcher at Textiles Environment Design (TED) Project, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London.
Permalink 2 notes
12 2 / 2012
Embroidered Quilts from the Adithi Collective
via University of Illinois at Chicago
Exhibit at the Library of the Health Sciences, during October and November, 2003*
Adithi is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting women. Adithi’s mission is to empower a diverse group of Indian women living in poverty. The Adithi project is distinctive for its transformation of the traditional kantha (embroidered quilts) into a vehicle for expressing contemporary social and political concerns, including a broad range of health issues.
Since the 18th century, Indian women have made sujuni kanthas or embroidered quilts. This tradition was revived in the late 1980s when the Indian women’s organization, Adithi, joined the Mahila Vikas Samyong Samiti, an organization in the Bihar State, to encourage poor rural women to design, embroider, and sell these kanthas in order to supplement their incomes. The important theme of women’s collective activism appears on many of the quilts and affects the structure of the quilt-making process, where numerous women collaborate to create the designs, embroider, and provide one another community and support. Although they seek to sell their designs, the women have not shied away from difficult themes.
Based near the village of Bhusura, the quilt project has helped support widows, housewives, and the school fees of children, especially girls. The quilts display figures delicately embroidered or appliqued on cotton or locally made silk. Many of the figures are drawn from the lives of the craftswomen, showing their work, their landscape, and their social struggles. Among their topics are women’s work, domestic abuse, rape, forced prostitution. In this exhibit, the kanthas all illustrate the women’s efforts to improve their health care.
For more information see: Sandra Gunning, “Re-Crafting Contemporary Female Voices: The Revival of Quilt-Making among Rural Hindu Women of Eastern India,” Feminist Studies 26.3 (Fall 2000), pp. 719-26.
*note: After some searching, sadly it looks like this organization is no longer running, but the work it produced is still important.
Permalink 3 notes
