Let's Get This Party Started

What is Red Thread Studio? It's a blog (that I hope will develop into a full-fledged Web site) focused on three areas:

• Slow Cloth: Global textile traditions and techniques, and textiles, fabric, and clothing design with a story and a history and a cultural identity; Indian embroidery, Japanese kimono, indigo dyeing, American quilts, Indonesian batik, Western wear. You get the idea; the ethnography and community of cloth. Every culture and every region of the world has a textile identity, and before we're all wearing identical, dirt-cheap Old Navy clothes, we should preserve, protect and celebrate these arts.
• New Cloth: Fabric and fashion made to be relevant to the concerns of the 21st century, especially cloth made from organic or alternative fibers, and that has a focus on sustainable design; the world of Slow Fashion; and functional "space-age fabrics," too.
• Art Cloth: The work of textile and fiber artists today, many of them using traditional methods in innovative ways. I don't worry too much about the distinction between art and craft here. I'm more interested in the idea that we're drawn to be creative, expressive, and innovative in the sometimes-painstaking medium of fiber in a world where everything can be done for us and everything can be automated, yet artists still make the choice to design and create by hand. Art quilting, knitting, felting, beading, weaving, sewing unique garments,  embroidery, dyeing, printing, painting on cloth -- these acts feed the soul and beautify the world.
  

These categories overlap like crazy, inspiring each other, borrowing from each other, creating the world of texture, color, design and function in cloth that we may take for granted, but that's changed civilization.

Why Red Thread Studio? About twelve years ago, a friend told me that, in Japan, there is a legend that says that each of us is connected to our soul mate by an invisible red thread. I love the idea that our world is a huge spinning sphere of red thread, if we could only see it, leading each of us to our greatest passion and destiny. It's a mystical story of textiles and color and connection, and red, the color of the heart, of fire, of roses, is my favorite hue. So the red thread, the most mundane of objects, is also magical.

So thanks for stopping by; come back often; follow the red thread.

Comments

[Meg in Nelson]

Ha, I had to come to the very start to find out why the red thread! And you mean, that red thread? Interesting. Particularly because I never paid my attention to that "story", as it was too passive for my taste, because a girl was to wait until the red thread guy showed up one day. But I take your point, and now I have to follow you from here to May 2010.

[Lainie]

Dear Maureen, thank you! I appreciate the encouragement.

Dear Nancilyn, thank you as well.

Susie, I will look at artclothnetwork.com and would be happy to share any information.

Mara, thank you. My friend's wife is Japanese and he characterized the story of the red thread as very much Japanese, and about meeting your soul mate, but I've seen it since mentioned as Chinese, and it seems to have become very meaningful in the Chinese adoption community. I have obviously taken some liberties with it . . .it's a lovely and very compelling concept. How are things in Beijing? I got to visit Hong Kong in July and hope to see much more of Asia.

[Mara]

Elaine, interesting thoughts which have spurred an interesting discussion on Sharon B's blog. By the way, the red thread saying is Chinese, not Japanese...... Also, in its purest historical form, the saying actually refers to a red thread that joins two soulmates who are destined to meet and marry, but in modern times, and especially because of western interpretation of the saying, many people now believe it has a broader meaning of attachment between people, although that was not the original interpretation. Cheers, Mara (in Beijing)

[Susie Monday]

Thanks for the thoughtful entry to the blogging world. I hope you'll visit Art Cloth Network and consider it a resource. The network is a small group of artists who make art cloth (some do other stuff, others keep it pure and complex!). We are about to open the group to a few new members and I'd like to post the information here on your blog if you are interested. thanks, Susie Monday

www.artclothnetwork.com

[Nancilyn]

I love the story behind your blog title and look forward to the ensuing pursuit of the red thread as an adventuresome journey!

[Maureen]

I'll be back to read more fascinating blogging.
I enjoyed this one very much.

Maureen