What’s Your Textile Identity?

“If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”  We hear that kind of question in election years, directed at the candidates.  It’s interesting to hear the answers, but the other day I started thinking of that question with a textile slant.

I was pulling articles out of old magazines and filing them into my idea notebooks, when a juxtaposition of images got me thinking.  There was a 2-page ad for some sort of home decor, paints or cabinets or something.  On the first page, a black background surrounded a transparent silhouette of a woman, and through the silhouette you could see the next page, which showed a dream kitchen.

Well, I was only interested in the silhouette idea, so I separated it from its second page.  I happened to set it down on top of an ad from Architectural Digest that showed 3 large swatches of designer fabrics.  They completely filled the silhouette.  To me it seemed to say, “These fabrics express this woman’s personality.”

So here’s something to think about:

If you were a textile, would you be historic, vintage, or modern?

Would you be a fashion fabric, a furnishing fabric, or something else?

A neutral, or a bright color?

Would you be cotton, linen, silk, wool, or a manmade fiber?

Would one textile be enough to express your personality?

This is my own version of the Textile Woman , made with scans of some of my woven swatches, clip art from an old CD, and Photoshop.  When I arranged the fabric images at random in the silhouette, the patterns began to look like the curves of a woman’s neck, chin, and hair.  I had a lot of fun playing with that.   I can see myself creating more of these!