Cultural Tech-Fusion Fabrics

 
 
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Textile design by Carmen Uruena Slee
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Textile design by Lisa Whistitt & Kadin Whitsitt
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Textile design by Pantea Karimi
In the process of managing the fusionwear sv site, I have come to realize that it is very helpful to walk people through the process of creating a tiling image. I have assisted three inspiration image submitters in  turning their designs/photos into textile designs. Using a combination of scanning, Photoshop and, in one case, the freeware SumoPaint, these individuals created fun textiles. This was a good learning process for me as an instructor as it gave me a trial run in teaching textile tiling using these tools; I will be conducting a free digital textile design workshop at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles on Friday (June 4th) during the SubZero Festival.

I am also experimenting in using freeware tools to record and teach textile tiling. ScreenToaster is a great tool to recording your actions on the screen. I created one such demo, but need to play around with settings more as the resolution is very low.
Here it is posted to YouTube.
I learned about some of these tools from fellow Merit Scholar, Nicole Dalesio.
Below is a link to a wonderful video she created about the kaleidoscope filter in SumoPaint. She used ScreenToaster to record her onscreen actions.
http://vimeo.com/10759719

She is a pro at creating clean and crisp videos. I am eager to learn more from her in the Merit Program this summer at the KCI Center for Innovation.