Tien Chiu

You are here: Home / All blog posts / Variety is the spice of design

by

Variety is the spice of design

I spent some time this morning fiddling around with leaves.  No matter how I arranged them, the piece felt dull and static.  Very discouraging.

Then it occurred to me: maple leaves don’t look like that when they fall!  I had been using the same maple-leaf pattern that I wove into the leaves – which had to be symmetric because of the threading.  But these pieces are going to be cut and appliqued – I could do whatever I liked with them!

Off to Google Search, where I found several asymmetric, interesting pictures of falling leaves.  Using those as an inspiration, I created a bunch of different maple-leaf shapes.  The result was this arrangement:

drifting maple leaves, all different shapes
drifting maple leaves, all different shapes

I still have some design work to do, but this feels MUCH better than the previous version:

one possible configuration of leaves
one possible configuration of leaves

I like this a lot, and will probably try executing it in applique tonight or tomorrow.

Comments

  1. Tien,
    Watching your musings on this with great interest. I am working on some preliminary woven fashion concepts myself, and it is great to follow your chain of thought as I work through my own design ideas.
    This whole leaf applique thing has bugged me. Most of your mock-ups with these leaves seem to detract from your beautiful design instead of augmenting it, (in my solitary opinion).

    I did notice ONE photograph that you posted that really caught my eye and got my juices flowing, though. It is photo #1 that you published on January 17th. What excited me, was the effect produced on the jacket by the inadvertent shadow created by light filtered through trees/leaves (I believe) that falls on the lower left region of the coat. The subtle but leafy motion captured there gives great interest to the piece. I also question whether its success lies in the subtle play of shadow suggesting leaves, without BEING leaves, or whether it might have something to do with WHERE on the jacket it falls.

    Just food for thought as you work through this interesting design process.

    I enjoy your Blog, thanks for sharing your process!

    Barbara

  2. Right on.

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.