[depot] concept development - textile

How I developed a textile:

I first started with an inspiration object, something that was in some way related to the Pullman depot, whether it be something physical about the building itself, or something related to trains and depot stations. I was immediately attracted to a radiator located just off the main entry. It has clean, wide planer, horizontals lines that are smooth and free of any ornate designs that I typically see on radiators of this same shape. These horizontal lines round on the top and are sharp, almost blade like.

I examined these shapes and elements and analyzed them.

I then took these elements and principles and applied them 2-dimensionally.

Then after making around 50 of these, I selected 8. I then took one of those and made a pattern from it.

I selected one of these:

And created a pattern from it:

And then sent it out to Spoonflower.com to be made into a textile.

Textile Reflection Essay

The blurring and crisscrossing of heat waves were the inspiration for my textile design. I chose to keep the textile in its original colors because when those colors were manipulated, it lost the effect of the natural bleeding and blurring. I also chose to keep the pattern at its same scale because the blurring and bleeding, and the hierarchy of the layers were very clearly represented at this size. If it had been smaller, these attributes would have been harder to see. If it was any larger, it would have been too distorted and errors would have been very noticeable.

When I plotted the textile for production, there was a thin white line that appeared. It didn’t appear as a repeat, but as more of a glitch, as it wasn’t in the same place within the pattern repeat. Unfortunately , when I got the textile the white lines were much larger and very obvious. The color pattern and scale turned out great though. The blurring and bleeding of lines and colors reads beautifully. There is a depth to the textile through the many layers. To fix the white line problems, I would adjust the repeat again through photoshop.