Textile design inhabits a liminal space spanning art, design and craft. This book explores how textile design bridges the decorative and the functional, and takes us from handcrafting to industrial manufacture. In doing so, it distinguishes textiles as a distinctive design discipline, against the backdrop of today's emerging design issues. With commentaries from a range of international design scholars, the book demonstrates how design theory is now being employed in diverse scenarios to encourage innovation beyond the field of design itself. Positioning textiles within contemporary design research, Textile Design Theory in the Making reveals how the theory and practice of textile design exist in a synergistic, creative relationship. Drawing on qualitative research methods, including auto-ethnography and feminist critique, the book provides a theoretical underpinning for textile designers working in interdisciplinary scenarios, uniting theory and texts from the fields of anthropology, philosophy, literature and material design.

Woven Textile Design offers a comprehensive introduction to weaving for all those wishing to design and produce a wide range of fabrics from scratch. Starting with the basics of woven textile design, the book looks at how to draw up and interpret records and notation, before explaining how different types of cloth are constructed. From the most basic of plain weaves, through twill weaves, textured weaves such as seersucker, crepe and corded cloths to more complicated designs created with extra threads woven in, a wide range of patterns are covered. Illustrated throughout with diagrams, weaving plans and beautiful examples from contemporary designers, the book also includes tips on using different yarns and colours to create stunning and unique designs. Offering clear, practical advice, this book will show you how to interpret your initial concepts and develop your ideas on the loom.

This book includes fundamentals of textile processing technology with explanation of craft techniques, various stages of processing fibres and yarns with useful, readily understandable, line drawings. Fibrous types, dyes, yarns and cloths have been explained and material is supported by glossary and explanation of processing stages from fibre to finished cloth. Further, the considerations of relevance to the development and preparation of a design collection are outlined and discussed. Various testing procedures, including fibre, yarn and cloth identification methods, and important innovations in textile products and processing are identified and explained as well. Focused mainly on the needs of students specializing in textile or fashion design, at first year undergraduate university level, this book: Covers all stages from fibre to finished cloth. Discusses various stages of processing fibres and yarns. Explains fibrous types, dyes, yarns and cloths supported by relevant glossary. Presents explanations of both tactile and aesthetic aspects of textiles used in clothing.

Screenprinting is essentially a stencil method of printing, but is has vast potential. This beautiful book explains the techniques behind the art and introduces ideas to explore its exciting and versatile qualities. Packed with step-by-step sequences and practical advice, it not only explains the process but inspires designers and makers to experiment with the creative potential of this striking art form. It introduces the basic technical aspects of printing on fabric, as well as the equipment and materials. Ideas for designing and developing different types of motifs, images, patterns and repeats are given and how to combine the different elements together. It covers effective low-tech methods that exploit physical skills and simple tools, as well as contemporary printed textile practice with digital input and sophisticated technologies. Advice on the use of colour is given as well as dye recipes and the instructions for their use on fabric. Methods are included such as cross dyeing, crimping and mark making on fabric, which can be used in conjunction with screenprinting. Drawing on the author's over forty years of experience, it shares her practical tips and ideas for both the traditional processes of screenprinting and the latest techniques that embrace contemporary practice ready for a new textile audience.

Textile is at once a language, a concept and a material thing. Philosophers such as Plato, Deleuze and Derrida have notably drawn on weaving processes to illustrate their ideas, and artists such as Ann Hamilton, Louise Bourgeois and Chiharu Shiota explore matters such as the seam, the needle and thread, and the flow of viscous materials in their work. Yet thinking about textile and making textile are often treated as separate and distinct practices, rather than parallel modes. This beautifully illustrated book brings together for the first time the language and materiality of textile to develop new models of thinking, writing and making. Through the work of thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, and international artists like Eva Hesse and Helen Chadwick, textile practitioner, theorist and writer Catherine Dormor puts forward a new philosophy of textile. Exploring the material behaviours and philosophical language of folding, shimmering, seaming, viscosity, fraying and caressing, Dormor demonstrates how textile practice and theory are intricately woven together.

The Bauhaus school in Germany has long been understood through the writings of its founding director, Walter Gropius, and well-known artists who taught there such as Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy. Far less recognized are texts by women in the school’s weaving workshop. In Bauhaus Weaving Theory, T’ai Smith uncovers new significance in the work the Bauhaus weavers did as writers. From colorful, expressionist tapestries to the invention of soundproofing and light-reflective fabric, the workshop’s innovative creations influenced a modernist theory of weaving. In the first careful examination of the writings of Bauhaus weavers, including Anni Albers, Gunta Stözl, and Otti Berger, Smith details how these women challenged assumptions about the feminine nature of their craft. As they harnessed the vocabulary of other disciplines like painting, architecture, and photography, Smith argues, the weavers resisted modernist thinking about distinct media. In parsing texts about tapestries and functional textiles, the vital role these women played in debates about medium in the twentieth century and a nuanced history of the Bauhaus comes to light. Bauhaus Weaving Theory deftly reframes the Bauhaus weaving workshop as central to theoretical inquiry at the school. Putting questions of how value and legitimacy are established in the art world into dialogue with the limits of modernism, Smith confronts the belief that the crafts are manual and technical but never intellectual arts.