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