Methods for Designing Woven Textile-forms: Examples from a pedagogical textile design workshop

When designing Woven Textile-forms, both the 3D object and the textile it is composed of need to be developed simultaneously, a process requiring an adaptation of currently established methods from both textile and fashion design. This paper provides an overview of existing examples for woven formconstruction approaches through the lens of fabric (non-)rectangularity. It subsequently presents the method of flattening a 3D form into a weaveable 2D format, and the alternative weaving methods of Modular Weaving, Non-binary Weaving and Multi-selvedge Weaving destined at constructing nonrectangular seamless Woven Textile-forms. It further describes a range of associated prototyping and visualisation techniques including Maps of Bindings, paper models, Thread Maps and miniature nail looms. These are destined at helping textile designers in conceiving textiles in the shape of the final object instead of flat rectangular surfaces, and at providing woven form designers with alternatives to conventional cut-and-assemble approaches, thus creating new grounds for cooperation between both disciplines. The utility of these methods and techniques was tested during a workshop for textile design Masters’ students at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the results of which show that the integration of form-thinking into the textile design process is possible and generates new opportunities for form-making beyond cut-and-assemble.