Red Thread Studio

2009 Color of the Year: Mimosa

I'm working on another post, to be finished after I get some actual paying work done. But here's a quickie . . first of all, thank you to everyone who left such incredibly nice comments on my previous year-of-blogging post. I'm putting together a gift bag and will enter the names of everyone who has already commented, as well as any additional commenters on that post, in a drawing. The gift package will definitely include a lovely Indonesian batik, beads, and more.

Pantone has named its color of the year for 2009. You'll recall that last year's color was Blue Iris, a nice but not especially dramatic cobalt. For the coming year, please welcome . . .Pantone 18-0848, also known as Mimosa. It's described as an "engaging" shade of bright yellow with an orange hue. See some mimosa-colored clothing here. 

This is a very creative and strong second-and-third-chakra color with a nice multicultural feel; yellow-orange turns up a lot in other (non-American) cultures and countries. It's a joyful, warm color, and goodness knows we're going to need plenty of that. I think I approve; do you?

Pantone is the big daddy of color forecasting, but not the only source for color news, so there may be some competing 2009 colors announced soon. I'll keep my eyes open for those and report promptly. Now go pour a mimosa and meditate for a moment on its lovely hue before you drink up. 

Spoonflower and Textile Design Resources

I've been interested in textile print design for many years; the seed was planted, I think, when I first encountered Marimekko fabrics at the original Crate & Barrel store in Chicago sometime in the 1970s. I missed some opportunities for formal study, but have collected a pretty cool shelf of books on the topic, with several classics and a few treasures from the design heyday of the late 1950s and early 1960s:

The Internet has made textile design a bit more democratic -- where you once had to be in New York or PhiladelphiaLondon or , you can now research textile design to your heart's content from anywhere. Now you can also try your hand at the design process -- the wish-I'd-thought-of-that Spoonflower is out of beta mode and available to all. Upload a digital file and they'll print it for you on high-quality cotton fabric and send it back.

There's no minimum order at Spoonflower, so you don't need to be producing on a commercial level. And they have a great blog, too. The cost for printing is $18 a yard, not bad for custom fabric in small quantities -- and you get to experiment with repeats and colorways and all the things that textile designers do, and all the amazing ways that computer software can manipulate images.

At the other end of the technology scale, hand-printed fabric is in vogue, too. Artisans in India, for example, have mastered the art of block printing for centuries with breathtakingly beautiful and complex designs, but even there, kids probably start as we all did, with corks and sponges cut into simple shapes. Somewhere in between, at-home printing, stamping and stenciling on fabric can yield bold, modern designs.  A lovely friend sent me a birthday gift of Lena Corwin's Printing By Hand (read her blog, too), and it's full of wonderful ideas and instructions. 

There are centuries' worth of masterful textile designs to explore. Begin by looking at some of the iconic 20th century brands -- Marimekko,  of course, for Finnish modern, and Liberty of London for beautiful florals and paisleys. Galbraith & Paul in Philadelphia makes gorgeous hand-block-printed fabrics. Visit Fibercopia and The Textile Blog. Trueup is a good spot to learn about contemporary cottons by independent designers. 

Inspiration is everywhere. You could spend a year just making stripe patterns, testing colors and patterns and the mysterious Fibonacci sequence. For a long time I collected fabrics with fruit and vegetables (conversationals, in print design lingo) and now mostly just have a weakness for cherries and eggplants. 

Corrected: Finland is the home of Marimekko, not Sweden . . .a dumb error, my apologies. 

Color and Spirals

In France they kiss on Main Street

Amour, mama, not cheap display

        -- Joni Mitchell, In France They Kiss on Main Street

No one sees behind the door

But every day it's one step forward

Soon we'll be sleeping in Paris

And we can set those wild ones free

       -- Rosanne Cash, Sleeping in Paris

Some color and curves and dreams of Paris for Saturday morning . . .

When it comes to art quilts, I'm consistently drawn to those that have a painterly quality, and none more so than the work of Deidre Adams, who combines painting and quilting in a way that's fascinating to me. Her latest blog post has a quilt that I think is just stupendous -- see it here. The color and texture are extraordinarily appealing and interesting. 

For more color, New York Times fashion and culture writer Bill Cunningham has a short slide show with audio on women wearing colorful  -- and some outlandish and very creative -- clothes on the streets of Paris.  It's very fun and will make you want to be a French woman (even more) or at least to be strolling on the sidewalks of Paris.

Whenever I think about color, I have to go and visit the Colour Lovers blog,  and I'm rarely disappointed. Here's a post on the architecture of Hundertwasser, an artist I've written about before, whose work is inspired and idiosyncratic and strangely wonderful. From the post: "He was fascinated with spirals, and called straight lines 'the devil's tools." 

No devil's tools today -- make it all about the curves, even if you can't see around the bends.