The Taft's carpets + vintage Christmas ornaments

The Taft Museum's Carpet... I told you they were nice.

Other nice articles from the Taft.  May have shown these before.

The Taft had an antique Christmas Ornament Show

on display while we were there.  A lot of nice texture.

Saturday

Quilt!

Hildur Bjarnadottir

Enjoying Hildur Bjarnadottir's soft colors in 13 Portrett

created by lint roller tape mounted onto plexiglass.

13 Portrett

Also nice, Reconstructed Canvas IV, 

which is entirely crocheted linen.

Reconstructed Canvas IV

Here is an embroidered splatter.

Knit Ambitions

Recently I knit myself a glove for using my wacom tablet because after long use my hand would stick to the tablet.  It's 3 colors (a first for me) and fingerless, so as you can imagine, it's pretty rad.  Next on the list is knitted and crocheted lace.

Chinese Home Decor Expo 2011

Typically in the world of contemporary textiles, the United States designs it and China manufactures it. Recently China has taken the initiative to design and manufacture for its own people. My professors got a chance to go to China to the Home Decor Expo, and were kind enough to let me look through the catalogs upon their return. The following images are from those magazines, most are Chinese designed and manufactures, but a few are designed by foreigners. It's neat to see what's trending in another culture's home design. Here are some highlights.

Detail shot of pixelated wallpaper. Something I'm crushing on now.

This deer motif is larger than one would expect to find in American design. Notice most motifs are larger, bolder and brighter than seen in American Home Design.





See the fluorescent bulb in the room above? I've heard fluorescent lighting in the home is more accepted in Asia than it is in America, and it really alters the decor's color palette. The catalog was filled with acid greens and blood oranges and I wondered it if had to do with how it looked under fluorescent light.

Spring Inventory

Here are some examples of the work done this past semester. The first set is from my Surface Design studio:

Here I chose a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder as my color and composition source. I really concentrated on color matching on this sample and for the composition I took my inspiration from Mondrian and applied squares of color in the same place as they appear on the original composition.

Here my color source is Wayne Thiebaud. I decided to take the color stripes found in the ice cream and make my own stripes. The colors follow from left to right. Color matching was very difficult in this sample because there were so many slight variations in each of the colors in the original painting. I tried to keep the ice cream feeling in the stripes I made.

Thickened MX dye with a seaweed solution, set for one week. Resist dyed. I'm not too crazy about what basically amounts to tie-dying, but I like the sense of depth created by this thickened dye. There is more color variation and is more visually interesting than most tie-dye. This was made using only two dyes, orange and chino.

Marbling!

A while back I bought a marbling kit and I found this to be the perfect opportunity to try it out. I use two methods, raking with a fork and droplets. Many of the colors dispersed differently. Notice some of the Lisa Frank influence?

Some more samples (old school PBS influenced):

Reverse applique by hand

Machine Appliqued

Embroidery in Progress:

The dark park of the fabric is reverse appliqued fabric that I overdyed. The rest is stitches in different golds. I want to fill more of the space with embroidery. Below is a detail.

This past semester I also decided to learn how to weave. Here are some of the results:

This was my first successful weaving, boxes made from satin weave structures. It was made on an AVL compu-dobby 24 Harness Loom.

This is a sample playing with twills on the same loom.

We learned how to use the Jacquard TC-1 loom. Below the weaving is my pattern made on Photoshop.

The Gregg Museum

Recently I visited the North Carolina State University's museum, the Gregg.

Here are some images from their collection.

(Some images are blurry because I wanted the colors to be accurate, so I didn't use flash)

19th Century Quilt

19th Century French Dress

19th Century Kimono with the four seasons depicted

Crystal Dress (1970s or 1980s)

Woman's Turkish(?) shirt

All silk embroidery with beetle shells and mirrors

(thought to keep away the evil eye)

Top: Inside of shirt

Bottom: Outside of shirt

Gold wrapped thread sari