Posts from the “Textile design” Category

Bedding anybody?

Posted on September 6, 2014

This is the third batch of work from our summertime textile exploration. Working with bedding and its large scale is very different than the work we were doing with scarves and pillows. A 2 meter x 2 meter duvet cover, for example, cannot simply be dipped in a bucket of dye. So, we headed to the hardware store for large scale wood pieces, vices and clamps. With the help of the bathtub, a bunch of dye and a twist on traditional shibori folding techniques, we created these two bedding sets.

Scarf exploration

Posted on September 3, 2014

Scarves are another great canvas for textile design. We found beautiful cottons at our favorite Berlin markets and set about dyeing them in every way possible. We designed & cut stamps, mixed crazy custom dyes and rewrote the rules of traditional shibori to keep it interesting. Here’s a sample of our hand stamped, shibori and batik pieces, which we had fun shooting in the neighborhood.

Pillow exploration

Posted on September 1, 2014

This summer, we decided to put a deeper focus on textile design. We experimented across fabrics, techniques and dyes. A few of the pieces we’ve included here show the wide range of things we played around with, but by no means represent a collection. Here, we focus on our pillow designs and subsequent posts will show other bedding pieces and scarves.

Fabrics: we found linen to be heavier, have a better drape and be all around more substantive than cotton for pillows, so we used linen on many of our pillow designs

Techniques: most of our pillow designs were created by using immersion dyeing, direct printing, shibori (a Japanese term for several methods of resist-dyeing to make a pattern by binding, folding, twisting and compressing), stenciling, discharge application, traditional batik (wax resist) and/or block printing with stamps we made ourselves from found objects or foam

Dyes: we bought all of our textile dyes here in Berlin. They are: fiber-reactive dyes, discharge gel (which is like bleach), fabric paints and photo emulsion for textiles that develops in sunlight