Otomi Textiles

Said to be inspired by wall paintings on cliffs in the Hidalgo region of Mexico Otomi textiles are often used as  coverlets, table cloths and runners. They are crafted from cotton muslin decorated in colorful embroidery. Almost all the motifs are creatures of fantasy.

Colour with Thread & Textiles

Gabriel Dawe was born in Mexico City where he grew up surrounded by the intensity and color of Mexican culture. After working as a graphic designer, he moved to Montreal, Canada in 2000 following a desire to explore foreign land. In search for creative freedom he started experimenting and creating artwork, which eventually led him to explore textiles and embroidery—activities traditionally associated with women and which were forbidden for a boy growing up in Mexico.

Because of this, his work is subversive of notions of masculinity and machismo that are so ingrained in his culture. By working with thread and textiles, Dawe’s work has evolved into creating large-scale installations with thread, creating environments that deal with notions of social constructions and their relation to evolutionary theory and the self-organizing force of nature.  His designs create a beautiful ombre and is a great inspiration to have more color in your life..

Yellow

So in fashion they are saying yellow is the NEW pink and here's our suggestion in home décor - create a sunny effect with shades of yellow from neon to ochre to flaxen. See some ideas below about how to use yellow as a great accent color in many environments.

Christien Meindertsma

Dutch artist Christien Meindertsma explores the patterns of the traditional Irish fisherman's sweater in her oversized knitted rugs. Meindertsma has been committed to reviving the artist's relationship to processes lost with industrialization, unearthing "the life and story behind the products that we surround ourselves with," she says. In pursuit of her art, she has spun wool from heirloom sheep in the countryside and harvested flax with Dutch designer Thomas Eyck.

Inspired by the Aran sweater, Meindertsma takes the chunky knit trend to a whole other level in her Aran Rug  project. She uses custom-made wide-gauge knitting needles and thickly spun wool, thick as a rope, to create rugs that play with scale and texture.

 

An exercise in Relativity

Clumps of green play hide and seek with the white marble and red stone of the Humayun's Tomb as I set off from Delhi to Panipat, where the looming, dusty, blaring, peaceful, communal factories of Rugs by Raj. It takes me a moment to realize that the green and the stone are as they always were; it was me, instead, that was moving. And this sense of displacement--and re-placement--continues through the day. 

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I'm walking--floating--through rows of men--gluing, cutting, cleaning, stitching, packing, counting, listing--and stacks and stacks of rugs--made from wool and cotton and plastic and an array of waste material: this is the finishing room. 

Floating in raw material

Something of the posters of gods and goddesses, the play of color, then the white packaging shroud that conceals the long, labored task of creating a single rug, strikes me as intensely philosophical, as the seed, the bloom, the end, and a re-creation.

I am simultaneously in myself and hovering above, realizing the distance, physical and spiritual, between those that create and those that utilize.

Hand tools made by the workers at the factory

The handmade glue, the storage of the glue in the wedge of a brick, the solidification of a handful of latex to create and eraser, the course sticks of a broom to remove extra lint, the metal creation of a flattening device, the brightly colored sari-ed women sitting amongst ceiling high piles of white yarn--like an aurora borealis in the morning: All these homemade, everyday innovations are particular to India and are interwoven into the framework of the rug. 

Brooming away the extra lint

Innovative ways to remove excess lint

The factory is like a giant human body: A brain sends messages to heart, which pumps blood through its vessels, distributed through organs, permeating each tissue, bringing alive every cell. 

Strumming music to the ears

I return to the comfort of the main office, the music of the radio and the music of the tools reverberating in my ears. I take my slippers off and the fibres tease and caress the undersides of my feet. I return, in a reverie, to the fields of sheep that leant the heaps of wool, to the women who sifted through it, sheep dust flying in the air, to the men who placed it machine after machine, until it turned the thin, rich fibre that sunk into the soapy water, that revolved on the spinning wheel, to the man in the white lab coat that dyed it multiple times, that pierced the canvas of a rug, and finally formed a pattern. A pattern that existed not only in form, color and theme, but in the hidden world of music, improvisation, and the blessings of Indian gods and goddesses. A pattern that is lain on your floor, your own story accumulating into someone else's, far away, and on your fingertips. 

Text and images by Wooly Eyes.