Cultural Tech-Fusion Fabrics

At our meeting last week, Colleen Quen shared her initial pattern studies. I was awed by how much hand work will go into these garments and was struck by how inventive and intricate these creations will be.

Today I drove the swatches I received from Spoonflower up to Colleen Quen.  In reviewing the fabrics this is how Colleen wishes to order them. The two left images will be on cotton lawn from Spoonflower (I just put in the order for 10 yards of each). The other four designs will be ordered from TechStyleLAB at Kent State University.

This morning I had a meeting with Colleen Quen and Rick Lee to review textile designs, color, fabrics and scale. We also decided on a name for the installation: Suface & Shape: Reflections on Silicon Valley. The museum wished to modify the name to fit the grant application, so the final name is:
TECHstyle SoftWEAR: Surface & Shape

Below: I was amazed by how quickly Colleen honed in on the patterns she was draw to for each garment. She will be making one for a woman and one for a man. She selected three fabrics for each.

Below are the revisions to colors and scaling of designs after Colleen's feedback. The top row is for the woman's garment. The bottom textile row is for the man's garment. I ordered silk test swatches from Kent State University's School of Fashion's  TechStyleLAB and cotton lawn swatches from Spoonflower .

Rick shared some great concept sketches for the installation. I am so very excited for this collaboration!

Tomorrow (6:30-8:30 pm) I will be conducting an image collection event at the Cupertino Community Center. This event is sponsored by the Cupertino Library as part of their Asian Heritage Month programming. People who bring a cultural garment or fabric for me to photograph will be entered to win a pair of Zazzle shoes. I will have a mannequin set up with images of my preliminary textile designs flashing across it. This visual is to aid the public in understanding the project (and hopefully will draw in people just passing by.) It won't be dark yet and I will be set up in doors, so I don't know how visible this will be.

It will be a test run for a similar mannequin set up at the SubZero Festival on June 4th at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. At that event I will create a digital textile lab for one evening. The public will have the opportunity to experiment with textile design on  laptops generously loaned by the Krause Center For Innovation. Visitors can create textile tiling patterns on paper, post them on an inspiration board and will also be able to vote on the public submissions for the fusionwear sv textile contest. The printing of the winning textiles will be sponsored by Spoonflower.

Today I visited the Euphrat Museum at De Anza College to deliver some art and to photograph my students work. The museum is displaying my first foray into digital textile design. This length of fabric was printed through Spoonflower.

Below is the accompanying plaque. It refers to the textile above as well as to several swatches yet to be installed. It also references student workshop series I designed at several schools.