“I make blankets,” reads Karrie Dean’s Instagram bio, straightforwardly enough. But of course, her blankets are much more than. To quote The Dude from The Big Lebowski, her blankets really tie the room together.
Colorful, textured, and comforting, Dean’s blankets are a giant piece of happy art that can be viewed at once across a bed or in little window panes of color, all folded up on a shelf. Or, picture this: a simple room, white walls, expected furniture. Now take a soft, cotton throw designed with eye-popping shapes and colors. Fling it on the bed. “That one thing just changed your habitat,” she writes on her website. “And that’s why I design these blankets. Simple, immediate happy.”
According to Dean, blankets provide the perfect canvas. “There’s nothing wrong with loving color,” she writes. “Loving cozy. I don’t know about you, but I get the feeling you hate boring and scratchy as much as I do.” Naturally, we also love all things cozy.
But ironically enough, Dean found a passion for textile only once she was pushed against the wall, after being laid off from what she calls “the wild world of advertising.” That was when she decided to put her art degree to good use. “So I started sketching, spent a ridiculous amount of time tracking down some awesome artisans who can do the softest, happiest things with beautiful fibers, and the rest is, well, it’s not history, because it’s still happening,” she jokes.
“Even though I didn’t have money, I was looking at throws,” she further explained in an interview with the Kansas City Star. “I thought of that as an accessory, but something that still, you open it up and it’s big and it’s pretty and you can put something on it, and it can be art kind of.” We’re glad she found her artistic, yet practical, calling.
