Research Point 2

Investigate the Diversity of Style and Design in Textiles Available to the Consumer

The only way I could begin to approach this topic in my head was to begin to find out what textiles were available to me in my immediate local area.  I live in quite a small market town, and while there are three huge cities within about an hours drive, to me personally, with two small children and no car, they may as well be on the moon.

Focusing on our local area then became more and more depressing, people I spoke to told me story after story of the fabric shops, haberdashers and wool shops that used to be around but have in recent years vanished form our towns.  If I want to walk into a fabric shop in my local area the choice comes down to Laura Ashley and two different branches of Hobbycraft.  So 'the diversity of style and design in textiles' is, to this consumer at least, non existent.  The only thing available locally is either floral cottons or poly-cottons, occasionally a plain, and lots and lots of brightly coloured synthetic fleeces and nets.

Reading 'Techno Textiles' by Sarah E Braddock and Marie O'Mahoney was a real eye opener for me, I genuinely had no idea that there was such a huge range of scientific techniques and approaches that went in to creating textiles.  It was exciting and inspiring to read about them but they are just not fabrics I am ever likely to encounter.  My feeling is that if I one day want a contemporary finish to my fabrics then really my only option is to create them myself.  To this end I have found books like 'Textiles Now' by Druscilla Cole and 'Structure and Surface - Contemporary Japanes Textiles' by Cara McCraty and Matilda McQuaid hugely inspiring.

Perhaps this is why I find myself working almost exclusively in plain fabrics, especially natural calico, because the other options open to me really don't inspire me and at least if I start with something plain I can make it look the way I want to.  In addition I prefer to have as small a carbon footprint as possible, the synthetic  fabric market is something that I try to avoid as much as possible, I don't believe that the way forward is to create more and more production intense textiles.  I would prefer that everything I used were organic, unbleached and locally grown, hopefully one day that will be possible.