Melanie Testa

Textile Design

Big Sigh.

MellyFatStacks

Hello. I have been a long time gone. Welcome. I am back.

I did it.

Heave a sigh.

Please! 

 

One day, in the very near future (May!), there will be a line of fabrics with my name on the selvedge. This is a dream come true. I am romantic about this step, I have wanted to ‘be’ a ‘textile designer’ for a very long time, so long, in fact, the idea has become personally mythical. To have actualized this dream feels good,

really good.

To say that I will have a line of fabrics? I need to pinch myself to remind me that I did it. This is real.

I will be part of printed textile history!

I love to paw through photographic repesenations, collections of textile designs. I love to read up on the artists, styles, color choices. Maybe one day, my prints will end up in books similar to my favorite. 

As a result of this hard work, I have lost my blogging voice in the process. All this activity and making stalls my ability to share and upload and post to my blog-but oh! My! Goodness! Soon, you will see what I have done! I am very excited. But, I miss sharing with you.  It isn’t that I don’t think about posting, I have just been very busy fulfilling deadlines. It has been great. I am doing the work I have always wanted to.

This means, life is good. Really good.

I am piecing and making quilts, using -my- printed cloth, which turns out to be

magical!

I love piecing, I love seeing the prints made smaller, cut, fitted and nestled against their fellows, once sewn, a simple four patch. I am on a mission to economically use as much of my printed cloth as is possible. I am cutting squares in 1.25″, 2″, 2.5″,25″ and 3.625″ squares.

Big fat stacks!

I want all of the usable cloth in this studio to be ON the chopping block. I am going to arrange them in gradations. I need more. Much more! Fat, fat stacks.

(I use the words ‘fat stacks’ in honor of Jessie Pinkman on Breaking Bad-I am somewhat obsessed with Breaking Bad.)

Oh! Plus there are soy wax resisted silk velvet squares mixed in there!

I need some wide whale corduroy…

 

 

Finding Inspiration

Books I find inspirational.

Textile Design and its history is fascinating to me. I would love to gather more books on the topic, but in the meantime, I would like to share a few books with you just in case you haven’t heard of them before.  Textile Designs: Two Hundred Years of European and American Patterns Organized by Motif, Style, Color, Layout, and Period has been in print for more than 20 years. It reads like a catalog and each section and page is focused on a style, type of repeat and motif. Flipping through this book is pure eye candy.

Twentieth Century Textiles is a gorgeous book. The cover is a printed cotton design described within the pages of the book, each design is described in detail and artists are discussed. I think we easily forget that artists design the fabrics we use and wear, so when I am able to read about the artist, inspiration or even techniques used to paint the textile design, I get happy.

Boro – Rags And Tatters From The Far North Of Japan isn’t a ‘textile design’ book so much as visual inspiration in the realm of hand sewing. Whenever I take out my favorite textile books, Boro-Rags and Tatters comes out too.

I would like a few more tomes and if you have a suggestion, I would love to hear it.

I take these books out at the start of a creative day and page through, looking at color inspiration, motif, texture, any detail that pops out and says hello. Then I close the books and go on my way. All that history and color is bound to affect me somehow and I welcome it.