Thursday, December 15th, 2011. 6-8pm

Join Art in the Age to create one of a kind screenprinted holiday stockings!

Attendees will have the opportunity to screenprint fabric with seasonal archival patterns, selected by Sarah Moore, curator of the Design Center at Philadelphia University’s Historic Textile Collection. The screenprinted fabric will then be sewn into festive holiday stockings, perfect to hang on your tree or over the fireplace!

This is a FREE event, but please RSVP to reserve materials.

Art in the Age Store
116 N 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Celebrating the Heritage of Philadelphia Textile Production

DECEMBER 2nd-31st, 2011

Opening Reception: First Friday, December 2nd, 6-8PM

During the month of December, The Design Center at Philadelphia University’sHistoric Textile Collection, curated by Sarah E Moore, will create a visual history of Philadelphia’s rich textile heritage within the Art in the Age gallery.

Textile Design Graduation Exhibition

Sarah Dupre (TD '04) from Lilly Pulitzer presents for Textile Design Students

Sarah Dupre, Manager of Fabric and Trim Design and Development for Lilly Pulitzer gives an inspiring presentation covering the 'Lilly story', her position with the company and the potential for students to work for Lilly Pulitzer to Philadelphia University Textile Design students.

Interviews for both internship and full time positions were held earlier in the day.

Upcoming Events at Philadelphia University

Join us for the opening reception of Florence Knoll: Defining Modern on Wednesday October 26th from 6-8 pm in the lower level of Paul J. Gutman Library. 

An educational forum about Florence Knoll’s contribution to architecture and design will be held from 6:30 to 7:30pm.

RSVP specialevents@philau.edu

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BLUEREDYELLOW, a design and natural dye house based in Philadelphia, will be hosting a Red and Yellow Plant Dye Workshop at The Design Center from 10am-1pm on Friday October 21st.  

At this DesignPhiladelphia event, participants will gain a hands-on understanding of the processes involved in using plant material to create naturally dyed fabrics. Workshop includes lecture and demonstration of using raw plant materials to make madder root red and marigold yellow. Leave workshop with a handkerchief or bracelet.

Wheelchair accessible.
Admission: $5
Space is limited. RSVP blueredyellow.designs@gmail.com
http://blueredandyellow.wordpress.com/

Day of Service - Knit In

Textile Design students participated in this years Day of Service at Philadelphia University by putting all our knitting machines to use to knit over 50 red scarves.

The scarves are to be donated to the Foster Care to Success organization, who will include them into Valentine's Day Care packages for FCS students away at colleges and vocational schools.

Machine Knitting a Cosby Sweater

Machine Knitting a Cosby Sweater

Krochet Kids Kickstarter

A kickstarter that helps empower women in Lima, Peru - The product for pledges will be hand crocheted hats from the women in Peru, which will be available in various colors and designs from a fine alpaca/acrylic yarn blend, signed by the maker!

GROW your own fabric

Suzanne Lee, a fashion designer, has learned to grow her own fabric using tea, sugar, and microbes. Over the course of a few days in a grow bath, a pale, skin-like fabric is grown on the surface of the mixture. The fabric is dried flat or molded in a three dimensional form.

Suzanne's TED talk:

Carnovsky's RGB Wallpaper

From Creative Review

For the Milan Design Week, Italian studio Carnovsky
created a series of wallpapers that react to different coloured lights

UPDATE: new versions of the wallpapers are 
on display in a new exhibition in Berlin alongside 
prints and playing cards using the same technique. 
See our story here

The designs were created for the Milan shop of
Janelli & Volpi, a noted Italian wallpaper brand.
Each features overlapping illustrations, different
elements of which are revealed depending on
whether a blue, green or red light is shone upon them. 

Knit 9/11

Claire Renaut - graduate of our M.S. Textile Design program wrote -

"I wanted to share with you a project of mine that is very important to me and will bring some form of "happiness" to all. It is called "9/11 Knit", and it is a textile project of transformation of newspaper into a textile but also the transformation of sorrow into beauty and remembrance.

Please, take the time to see the entire explanation on http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clairerenaut/9-11-knit?ref=email and see how you can participate and share.

Please take a look at Claire's work which I found extremely powerful, emotional, inspirational.

Thank you Claire.

Fiber Futures: Japan's Textile Pioneers September 16–December 18, 2011

Fiber Futures: Japan's Textile Pioneers showcases the dynamic field of Japanese fiber art. Organized as a juried show jointly presented by Japan Society and International Textile Network Japan in collaboration with Tama University Art Museum, the works on display range from ethereal silk and hemp to paper pulp and synthetic fiber using methods that are sometimes deeply traditional, but sometimes employ the latest weaving and dyeing technology along with an environmentally conscious "green" ethos. Moving far beyond traditional utility, Japan's textile pioneers fuse past and present to create innovative, beautiful and sometimes challenging works of art.

http://www.japansociety.org/gallery

Defensible Dress

From the designer, Meejin Yoon of Howeler Yoon Architects:

The Defensible Dress is a response to the increasing breakdown and encroachment on personal space in everyday life. Historically, each culture and generation has had varying definitions of personal boundaries.
Globalization and the urban condition have diminished an understanding of, and respect for, such space. Personal space is increasingly challenged and violated by external pressures. Inspired by the porcupine and the blowfish, the Defensible Dress makes the wearer's personal space by activating a space-defining physical projection around the body. The extents of the personal space zone are defined as a numerical distance by the dress wearer. When infrared sensors detect an approaching body entering the personal space zone, a series of mechanical quills are activated, bristling to prevent encroachment.

Constructed Surface: Zipties

Zip City by Hong Seon Jang

Hong Seon Jang's artist statement:

I create works that evoke a fundamental recognition of our space and environment and imply physical vulnerability in our daily life. These ideas evolved from my interest in studying the similarities between human and non-human life forms pertaining to structures, symbols, and patterns. The main concept is a fascination with the comparison of human activity and natural phenomena as it corresponds to the circulation of destruction and creation. My work consists of installations often made out of found objects and common products. In giving these everyday materials new meanings and aesthetic possibilities, I strive to actively practice the concepts of the Eastern philosophies of the circulatory life system and the continuous flow of connections. I re-create or manipulate the materials into a likeness of natural forms to embody new contexts of physical existence, in a sense, mimicking the fundamental force of survival and growth. By attempting to understand characteristics of different life systems and their associations with our own entity as my subject matter, I intend to introduce new visual dialogue and meanings for ephemera in life to define conflict associated with contradictions inherent in nature and society, such as physical fragility and danger, ephemeral and perpetual, creation and extinction.

Design for Nine West

Design for Nine West

The global fashion brand Nine West is inviting artists to submit their graphics, illustrations and print designs in the theme of ‘Spring Summer’. Designers will have the chance to have their design printed on a tote bag for a Nine West limited edition collection and to receive $2200.

Submission Deadline: June 22, 2011

Voting Starts: June 23, 2011

Voting Ends: June 28, 2011

Winner Announcement: July 1, 2011

Solar Handbag by Diffus

Diffus creates a solar handbag

Luxury handbag becomes a portable power station when miniaturized solar cells and embroideries are combined…

With the boom of environmental consciousness, bags with integrated solar cells to charge your mobile phone or laptop have become commonplace. The usual approach of placing flexible thin film solar modules onto messenger type bags, however, has primarily led to products in a outdoor/leisure category. Diffus Design has teamed up with e.g. Swiss embroidery specialist Forster Rohner and Alexandra institute (DK) to challenge this approach.

A handbag that charges your mobile, helps you find your keys and looks amazing! 
In the daytime hours one hundred small solar power stations distributed on The Solar Handbag generate enough electricity to charge a mobile device and a powerful lithium ion battery hidden in a small compartment. At night or in dark surroundings, opening the bag activates optical fibres attached to the inside of the bag that give a diffuse glow and assist in the search for keys, purse or other objects of vital importance.

An aesthetic approach to function
The desire to create a solar energy harvesting surface that offers maximum design freedom while still being highly efficient is the driving force behind The Solar Handbag. Working around existing technologies is not an option: Most textile-based products have limited surface areas available and therefore thin film solar cells have limitations regarding efficiency and aesthetics. The technology behind The Solar Handbag is based on miniaturizing the currently most efficient photovoltaic material, monocrystalline silicon, into oversized sequins and processing them through traditional textile techniques.

The shape of the bag resembles the story between the relationship between the sun and moon – between light source and enlightened. Therefore the shape mimics an eclipse where the moon – the enlightened – interfere or interact with the sun – the light source. The surface is embroidered with an integrated combination of normal embroidery and conductive embroidery that is able to convey the energy harvested for the solar sequins to the rechargeable battery.

Promise of a powerful future
The Solar Handbag illustrates the first development step towards highly efficient, textile based solar cell surfaces. The first generation of solar elements shows an efficiency of 9% when converting solar energy into electrical energy. Overall, the solar elements distributed on The Solar Handbag are able to generate 2 Watts, more than enough energy to charge a mobile device, even at low daily exposure to sunlight. The next generation of solar elements are already promising – the new developments will double the efficiency.

12,000-Year-Old Textile Fragments Found in Peruvian Cave Are South America's Oldest | Ecouterre

12,000-Year-Old Textile Fragments Found in Peruvian Cave Are South America's Oldest | Ecouterre

Archaeologists have unearthed fabric and rope fragments that date as far back as 12,000 years in the past, making them the oldest known textiles in South America, according to a report in the April 2011 issue of Current Anthropology. Although the textiles were recovered from a cave in the Andes three decades ago, their age was largely unknown. Researchers chose to estimate the age of the site by taking radiocarbon dates from bone, obsidian, and charcoal—articles that can sometimes produce iffy results, says Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College who led the current team. Charcoal especially can overestimate a site’s age, he adds.

Textile Design professor EJ Herczyk to exhibit at Abington Art Center Solo Series 2011

On view May 14-July 31, 2011

Abington Art Center’s galleries will be transformed by four contemporary artists each presenting a solo exhibition. On view will be work by EJ Herczyk (Philadelphia, painting) Eva Mantell (Princeton, paper sculpture) Jedediah Morfit (Collingswood, relief sculpture and installation) and Thomas Vance(Philadelphia, sculpture and works on paper).

There will be a public reception and opening party on Sunday, May 15 from 3-5pm.

Directions - http://abingtonartcenter.org/visits/

Conversation at the Bard Graduate Center

Working Fabric: Innovation in Design at KnollTextiles
Conversation moderated by Brooke Hodge
Thursday, May 19, 2011, 6:00pm-9:00pm
at the Bard Graduate Center
38 W 86th Street, NY, NY

About Knoll Textiles, 1945-2010

From May 18 to July 31, 2011, the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture (BGC) presents Knoll Textiles, 1945–2010, the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to a leading producer of modern textile design. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue consider the individuals and ideas that helped shape Knoll Textiles from its founding to 2010, with the goal of bringing the sartorial dimension of the Knoll brand and the under-recognized role of textiles in the history of modern interiors and design to the forefront of public attention. The lack of recognition of modern textiles is perhaps best exemplified by the iconic “Womb” chair by Eero Saarinen. While it is featured in most twentieth-century design collections, its fabric, usually a Knoll textile and a dominant design element of the chair, is rarely if ever identified.

The curators of the exhibition are Earl Martin, associate curator at the BGC; Paul Makovsky, editorial director, Metropolis magazine; Angela Völker, Curator Emeritus of Textiles at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna; and Susan Ward, an independent textile historian. The exhibition comprises approximately 175 examples of textiles, furniture, photographs, and ephemera on loan from public, private, and corporate collections, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Smithsonian Institution, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; Yale University Art Gallery; the Brooklyn Museum; the Knoll Museum; and the KnollTextiles Archive.

Interestingly, the lack of museological and historical interest in modern textiles became apparent as the various loans for this exhibition were secured. For example, key works from Knoll’s innovative handwoven collection of the 1950s were found in boxes of scraps preserved for more than fifty years in the attic of a former Knoll employee and large samples dating to 1948, the second year of production for Knoll Textiles, languished in storage for decades at one of America’s leading design collections without formally entering the collection until they were recognized by Bard’s curatorial team.

Another major contribution of this exhibition has been the discovery in private collections of furniture with its original upholstery. Not only were these rare examples of early upholstery on Knoll furniture brought to light, but a major conservation project was subsequently undertaken that revealed the challenges of properly conserving twentieth-century furniture—of preserving not simply the furniture form but also the textile covering it.

Senior Exhibit

Three M.S. Textile Design and ten B.S. Textile Design students will be exhibiting in this years Senior Exhibit, running May 9th - 15th - Hours 9am - 8pm - Bucky Harris Gymnasium - Gallagher Athletic Center. Reception - Friday May 13th 6pm - 8pm.

Circular Loom

Lexus is paving the way to a new way of weaving. Their engineers have designed a circular loom to create carbon fiber three-dimensional shapes, which skips a few steps in the manufacturing process and produces an ultralight and super strong material.

Call for Entries

Don't forget! The deadline for Inkjet Textiles 2011 is coming up on May 1, 2011.

Inkjet Textiles 2011 is an international textile design and art exhibition, open to all professional textile design and art practitioners utilizing digital inkjet textile printing technologies. This exhibition will be open to public in October 2011 at meltemBIREY gallery, curated by Hitoshi Ujiie, director of the Center for Excellence of Digital Inkjet Printing for Textile at Philadelphia University.

Since, it’s inception in the late 1990’s, digital inkjet printing technology has had a dramatic impact on a diverse range of creative applications for textile practitioners. Inkjet textile printing has affected both the design world, and the art and craft community, where it is becoming an innovative method of producing refined surface explorations. Throughout its development phase, digital inkjet printing has created new design business models, and has been regarded as one of the most sustainable green printing processes. At the same time, this technology has generated new creative design styles, which cannot be visualized by any other traditional printing technologies.

Inkjet Textiles 2011 seeks new printed textile design, which demonstrates innovative and creative styles, and encourages one of a kind, prototype or commercially produced textile submissions.

Submission Guideline:

The work has to be original and utilized by inkjet textile printing technology. The size of the final work should not be larger than 7 feet in length and 15 feet in width.

Each artists / designers / craft practitioners can submit maximum of 3 pieces of artwork for selections. The work should be prepared in Jpg format and the file size should be no larger than 5 MB. For details or multiple files of the same work, you can submit 5 files in total.

For submission, please go to http://flotjet.com/id114.html for more details.

Timeline:

Entry Deadline: 1 May 2011

Selection Announcement: 1 June 2011

Exhibition Date: 5 October - 1 November 2011

Winners Circle: ITMA Virginia Jackson Competition

Congratulations to the winners of the ITMA Virginia Jackson Competition!!


Dobby:
1st - Philadelphia University, Mary Armacost
2nd - Rhode Island School of Design, Marissa Haback
Honorable Mention - Rhode Island School of Design, Julia Frisch

Jacquard:
1st - North Carolina State University, Leigh Hawkins
2nd - Rhode Island School of Design, Natasha Rosenber
Honorable Mention - Philadelphia University, Katherine Labate

Print:
1st -Michigan State University, Aubrey Owada
2nd - University of Georgia, Jessica Cates Miller
Honorable Mention - Philadelphia University, Elizabeth Weissert

Mary Armacost's dobby design

Elizabeth Weissert's printed design

Illuminated Jacket

Vega is a line of illuminated coats inspired by night.

Stylish outerwear with the hidden functionality of light, these coats are for every day; for your journey to work or around the city, from this season to the next.

Vega coats light up—whether for fun, fashion or visibilty at night, it can be for walking your dog or riding a bicycle. However you express yourself, this is something new and exciting to play with—a unique addition to your wardrobe.

Textile Sensor Demos

Textile sensor demos of the Tufted Stroke Sensor, Beaded Tilt Sensor, Knit Stretch Sensor, Felted PomPom Pressure Sensor, Neoprene Bend Sensor and the Crochet Potentiometer.

Weaving as Metaphor: Lecture Series at ICA

WEAVING AS METAPHOR LECTURE SERIES

Wednesday, April 6 @ 6:30pm

Explore the idea of weaving in the cultural landscape through a series of programs inspired by the work of Sheila Hicks. Four dynamic Philadelphia-area scholars will draw out these ideas in their own fields— architecture, economics, science, and religion—unraveling the ways weaving threads through so much of the contemporary and the ancient world. 

Architecture: with Jenny E. Sabin, Department of Architecture, School of Design and Co-Director, Sabin+Jones LabStudio

Through the visualization and materialization of dynamic and complex datasets, Sabin has generated a body of speculative and applied design work that aligns crafts-based techniques with digital fabrication alongside questions related to the body and information mediation. This talk will look at intersections between architecture, computational models, textile structures and biology through multiple modes of working and collaborating. The material world that this type of research interrogates reveals examples of nonlinear fabrication and self-assembly at the surface, and at a deeper structural level. In parallel, this work offers up novel possibilities that question and redefine historical and contemporary relationships between architecture and textiles.

Visit ICA for more events like this.

IKEA Pledges to Transition to 100% “Better Cotton” by 2015

Ikea Textiles

IKEA wants all its cotton to adhere to Better Cotton Initiative guidelines by the end of 2015, according to a 2010 Sustainability Report released Wednesday. The multi-stakeholder organization, which counts the Swedish furnishings giant as a founding member, is currently evaluating a set of draft criteria in pilot projects in West Africa, Brazil, Pakistan, and India, after which it will take responsibility for verifying compliance at the farm level. From chemical consumption to forced child labor, cotton’s importance as a raw material belies its social and environmental dark sides, admits the Swedish furnishings retailer. “IKEA works to reduce its need for cotton, but it is not realistic to believe that all cotton can be replaced with alternative materials,” it says. “This is why we work actively to increase the availability of more sustainable cotton.”

Read the full post by Jasmin Malik Chua

The Design Center at Philadelphia University

The Design Center has a new website with daily updates!

Here is a taste of some of their recent posts:

Unravel: Knitwear in Fashion

With the current wave of young fashion designers creating statement collections heavy with knitwear, it could not be timelier for Antwerp’s MoMu Fashion Museum to set up an exhibition that explores the richness and diversity of knitwear in fashion. Deceivingly, knitwear seems an unlikely suspect in the high-fashion world. Unravel: Knitwear in Fashion, counters the established idea of knitwear as old-fashioned and instead holds up an inspiring variety of knitted garments and accessories from the great fashion houses of the last centuries – Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean Patou and Chanel – up to contemporary designers and labels, including Sandra Backlund, Maison Martin Margiela and Mark Fast. The exhibition is a joint project of the MoMu and Emmanuelle Dirix, who is lecturer of Critical Issues at Winchester School of Art and also teaches at the Fashion Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and at University of the Arts London. MoMu’s curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven sheds some light on the exhibition.


 by Siska Lyssens for Anothermag.com

eTextile, Smart Clothing and Wearable Computing Showcase

Deadline: 18 May 2011
eTextile, Smart Clothing and Wearable Computing Showcase
Maker Faire and Lynne Bruning
San Mateo County Event Center
San Mateo, CA
21 May 2011


As technology becomes ever more interwoven with our daily lives, innovative means of interface blur the lines between computers, textiles and fashion.

Maker Faire and Lynne Bruning come together to create a showcase that fuses tech and fashion, function and form, reality and possibility..

On Sunday 21 May 2011 fashion designers and engineers, young and old, beginners and the skilled will join forces to present a Maker Fair original: An eTextile, smart clothing and wearable computing showcase!

Date: Sunday 21 May 2011
Time: TBA
Location: Arc Attack Stage
Producer: Lynne Bruning

Designers: Contact Lynne lynne at lynnebruning.com
Designers must be present at the time of the showcase
Designers can model their eTextile creation or bring their own model
Designer submission deadline Wednesday 11 May 2011

For more information and showcase details:
http://www.lbruning.com/etextiles/etextile-showcase-at-maker-faire-bay-area-2011/

from Fiber Art Calls for Entry

Textile Messages Symposium

Weaving with Fiber-optic Thread

The collaborative art team of Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese transform text into textile designs using handwoven fiber-optic threads and information feeds from the Internet. 50 Different Minds is the first piece in their interactive series. Scroll down in this article to watch a video about the making of this ingenious project. The piece was inspired by a quote by a influential Bauhaus painter and color theorist Josef Albers.

“If one says Red—the name of color—and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.”

—Josef Albers


Above: Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, 50 Different Minds (with detail), 2010; fiber-optic threads, custom electronics and software, live Internet feed; handwoven; 50" x 50". Photos by the artists.

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The project is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts and made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council for the Arts. Additional donations were made by individuals through Kickstarter.com. Research and development was undertaken during residencies at the Sally and Don Lucas Artist Programs at Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, California, and at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, New York, New York.