Inspire yourself with the textiles you see on holiday!
Italian dress fabric
Traditional cotton muslin fabric used for babies´ nappies and other related uses
Going on holiday means a change of scene and the chance to let go and open your horizons. Wherever you are – whether at the beach, having a city break or renting a holiday cottage high up in the mountains keep your eyes open for textiles to inspire you.
All you have to do is to open your eyes and look! I´m not necessarily talking about textile museums and galleries here, I´m just talking about leaerning to see textiles all around you with an analytical and creative eye. Most woven textiles you will see will be industrial such as bedcovers or cushions on a hotel bed, the dress fabric in a classy little boutique or the curtaining or table-linen in a little tea shop.
Being on holiday is an excellent time to look afresh at textiles and see how you can apply what you see to your own woven work.
So look at the fabrics close-up, try and see how they were woven – which was the warp and which was weft, what kinds of different yarns were used, and what kind of weave has been used. Does the fabric suggest quality to you or not? Why? Why does it have the drape and weight that it does?
Even though many industrial fabrics are woven on more complex looms than hand-looms you can still learn a lot from them. Ask yourself what it is you like (or don´t) about the fabric; this way you will refine and re-inforce your own personal sense of style and preferences.
If you enjoy being creative and developing your own particular style you wouldn´t want to (and you probably wouldn´t be able to anyway) replicate the textiles but you can be inspired by them and use them to develop ideas in your own woven textiles when you´re back at home after your holidays. Try making sketches on the back of an envelope to remind you, buy a postcard or take photos on your mobile phone or camera.
Simple plainweave upholstery fabric
Over the next week I´ll be talking about the textiles shown here that I spotted recentl when away from home. I´ll show you some of the fabric analysis I did of each one as an example of what you can also do.
If you´d like to learn more about fabric analysis why not book some one-to-one tuition on holiday with us in beautiful, mountainous north Spain. We offer intensive one-to-one 2-day courses and hope to offer weave design tuition too using Weavepoint software. You can also simply stay here with us (self-catering accommodation available) and hire a loom, with or without some individual guidance or tuition. Contact us for more details.
