TED member Clara Vuletich is part of a textile collective called bricolage which launched last week at Tent London, part of the London Design Festival. bricolage specialises in contemporary bespoke textiles products for interiors and their expertise covers a range of traditional and innovative textile skills including screen printed wallpapers and textiles; hand and machine knit; crochet and upcycled quilting.
The collective has been formed by five textile graduates from Chelsea, whose creative 'make-do' attitude has inspired them to join together to create unique and considerate textiles.They are also passionate about passing on their textile skill and knowledge and are developing a series of 'pop-up' workshops.
TED member and Senior Lecturer in Digital Print at Chelsea, Melanie Bowles, has launched her blog, Make It Digital which explores the creative interaction between traditional textiles and digital technology within fashion, textiles, craft and 'do-it-yourself'.
Mel's recently published book Digital Textile Design, offers tutorials and step-by-step guides in designing digitally for textiles. Since the publication, Mel has started to develop an on-line network of readers and makers who are inspired by the book and are sharing their creations and expertise with her.
The TED team recently took part in a small research project devised by Becky Earley, to coincide with the Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution exhibition which is opening at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in October.
The idea behind Conversations on (a) Slow Craft was to take a group of textile designers and send them on a barge trip along a canal, while they discussed Slow and what it means to them and their practice as textile designers. The TED group were also joined by wallpaper designer Linda Florence, furniture maker David Gates and the whole conversation was audio recorded by artist Russell Martin.
The group were then led through a workshop in Japanese Sashiko embroidery by Emma Neuberg, which is part of her Extended Life textile workshop series.
The idea is for the format to be repeated at the different cities where the Taking Time exhibit tours to. A group of jewellers may all travel together on a horse and cart and talk about Slow or a group of ceramicists on bikes.
The audio recordings and transcriptions of the conversation will be available soon. In the meantime, there are some previous audio recordings of conversations between artists about Slow on the Taking Time website.
