Based in Reston, VA, she draws inspiration for her contemporary wall quilts from the view of nature outside her window. This inspiration is quite literal. “Pebbles on the path or currents in water might become part of the texture I stitch into each piece,” she writes. “Color combinations in bird feathers or flowering plants might slip into the palette I use to start my next design.”

Textile art also comes quite naturally to Grisdela, as she comes from a long line of women who have expressed themselves using a needle and thread (although, curiously, she notes that there were no quilters in her family). “Creating with various forms of fabric and thread has been a part of my life since I was a child,” she says, adding that she taught herself the ins and outs of the trade through trial and error.

Grisdela’s quilts are showcased and sold in fine art and fine craft shows nationwide and can be found in private collections all over the country.  She also teaches classes and workshops and is the author of Artful Improv: Explore Color Recipes, Building Blocks & Free Motion Quilting, published by C&T Publishing in November 2016. But you can also follow her work online, via Instagram:

The post This Quilt Maker Is Inspired by the View Outside Her Window appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I began quilting late 2013 when working for a fabric manufacturer,” she recalled in an interview with Brown Paper Bag. “I’d done many digital quilt designs there and understood the basic steps and terminology, and I thought that was enough to start on a project on my own. I dove right into a king-sized quilt using that experience.”

According to Marañon, the toughest step was the math she had to figure out to get the design to fit together. “Weeks later I completed assembling the top of the quilt, but to this day it remains unquilted, mostly because of its massive size,” she notes. “I’ve since learned that my preference is with smaller scales, and on pieces that are improvised rather than designed and calculated.”

Letting one step dictate the next, her approach to quilt making is now intuitive and imbues each piece with spontaneity. Her creations explore abstract landscapes, geometry, and repetition, highlighting details that would otherwise be considered flaws. Her personalized pieces emphasize, therefore, the hand of the artist, the result being quilts with uneven seams, raw edges and exposed thread ends. Inadvertently, these marks become the signifiers of reactionary behaviors and moods specific to each piece and its materials.

All of her quilts are designed and made by hand from her studio in Los Angeles using vintage and dead-stock fabrics whose histories are vivified with every limited item made. “I love exploring all sorts of possible outcomes by simply playing around with color, fabric, print, and texture,” says Marañon. “I am inspired most when I’m working, and ideas come in a frenzied rush and I just have to try new ways to lay out shapes, or new ways to mix mediums. Experimentation and fun definitely fuel my quilted projects, and that has to be the reason I’ve fallen in love with it.”

The post The Improvisational Quilts of Lorena Marañon appeared first on PlayJunkie.

But it’s her textile art that first caught our attention. Recreating everyday objects in realistic detail, her knitted and embroidered creations include anything from Ketchup bottles to Nike trainers. “I’m often inspired by very ‘normal’ everyday items, items that portray the luxury of choice and comfort in the western world, whilst at the same time hinting at the excess that is often taken for granted in a fast-paced, immediate society,” Dance relayed in an interview with Lifestyle Tails, adding that “the irony being each knitted or embroidered piece that I make has taken hours/days/weeks to create.”

“I always aim for my work to be graphical, with a playful edge,” she adds. “Knitting and embroidery is typically perceived as a ‘feminine craft’ however I try to take gender out of the equation when coming up with ideas. I always strive to produce a carefully considered design, with a strong concept, using quality materials.”

Much like her approach to art, her approach to interior design is entwined with craftsmanship. Describing herself as an interior designer with a holistic approach to designing homes and workplaces, Dance is known for her luxury and contemporary interiors that have craftsmanship at the heart.

With so much going on for her, her days are very much packed. “I’m usually sculpting, knitting or stitching, which is always good time to put a podcast or music on…. or if I’m trying to work something out or write, I need total silence,” she describes her workday. “I usually work until around 6 depending on what I’m working on,” she adds.

Follow her work through Instagram:

The post Jessica Dance’s Textile Art Has a Playful Edge to It appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Founded in 2015, Jade offers an eye-catching range of hand-drawn designs that celebrate the fascinating plants and animals living on our planet. By celebrating the shapes, forms, patterns, textures, and colors prevalent in our natural environment, she hopes to restore our affinity with nature.

“I hand draw all my designs, which creates quite a personal feel to my designs,” she relays the creative process in an interview with Jung Katz. “I then apply color (which is generally quite bold) and edit these hand-drawn images digitally using photoshop.” According to Jade, she enjoys combining hand drawings with digital design, to create her eye-popping repeated patterns. “My work is quite detailed and I generally use a pencil to create my patterns, however, I do enjoy combining pencil and paint, as I feel these two mediums create quite unique pattern designs,” she explains.

Inspired by plants, foliage, flowers, animals, she’s also fond of geometric prints and also designs that are inspired by natural textures. Fashion is another huge inspiration for Jade, as she loves keeping up to date with styles from the runway and current fashion trends. 

Her luxury design collections are available on wallpaper, textiles, upholstery fabrics, furniture, cushions, ceramic tiles, and flooring, with all products printed and made in the UK. Here are some of our favorites:

The post We Sense a Pattern with Charlotte Jade’s Designs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, but currently based in Asheville, North Carolina, Just grew up surrounded by textiles and learned weaving from her mom when she was a little girl. Having studied later fashion design, sculpture, and textile art, she specialized in weaving and embroidery.

“With my weavings I try to seek the pleasure between the relationship of a tactile versus a visual synesthesia, touching colors, listening to textures, tasting shapes, perceiving colors represented by certain shapes, and vice versa,” she shared in an interview with Sarah K. Benning. “But especially, my purpose is to share this experience with everyone else and give them some colorful goosebumps.”

Using old weaving techniques, she adds a contemporary twist to her work by using vibrant color combinations and beautiful vintage threads. “As I’m weaving, I usually go crazy jumping on many diverse ideas at the same time like a distracted butterfly,” she jokes. “I try to make fast sketches and secure some of the color combinations that suddenly pop on my mind, as fast as possible.”

Take a look at some of her original designs in the gallery below:

The post Judit Just’s Colorful Tapestries Are Great Fun appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Having studied fine art, she began drawing with thread to pursue both passions – of embroidery and drawing. “Embroidery became my own private refuge,” she shared with Textile Artist. “The effects of embroidery seemed otherworldly and captured my imagination as the perfect way to explore secret thoughts.”

Indeed, her work seems to explore psychological landscapes, illuminating thoughts left unspoken. Literary snippets, memories, personal mythologies, and art historical references inform the imagery. Fused together, these influences explore relationships, domesticity, and self-perception.

“Embroidery also comes with a lot of baggage,” says Kingdom. “It has often been dismissed and overlooked; perceived as decorative, a school-girl craft, fussily old-fashioned, small. And that is precisely what attracted me to it. It’s deceptively pretty, unapologetically female, traditional and naive. It speaks in tiny whispers, and only those that care to listen can hear it. My work tries to capture murky ideas brewing around in my head, and the evocative nature of figures in stitch better conveys those ideas than other mediums can.”

Take a look at some of her murky ideas come to life through the use of needle and thread:

The post Michelle Kingdom’s Embroidery Art Speaks In Tiny Whispers appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I use thread as a tool for drawing,” she explained in an interview with Textile Artist. “This could be fine silk for stitching by hand and machine or wool, rope, wire or perhaps even plastic washing line.” It’s a process that absorbs hours on end and she admits she often finds herself at 2 AM wondering where the time went.

Her work, featuring mostly portraits and townscapes, tends to befuddle the viewer, seeming at first like a pen and ink drawing – but turning out to be something altogether different upon closer inspection.

“I love drawing, so that is the main focus of my work, says Cryer. “It has developed over time into experimenting with scale and using different media. My work ranges from small intimate drawings with lots of tiny detail and texture, to large freely stitched loose images.”

Each executed mark, however small, is a decision made. “Drawing with thread is a continuous process of decision making,” she writes on her website. “Deciding what is required, for example, to conjure up a facial feature – exactly where the needle enters and exits the fabric, the type of thread, the length of each stitch, the number of stitches needed to suggest a smile or capture an emotional nuance.”

Take a look at some of her captivating work in the gallery below:

The post Andrea Cryer Uses Thread as a Tool for Drawing appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I am drawn to the discarded: clothes from friends and relatives, paper ephemera, and vintage linens,” she writes on her website. “These disparate materials were all once utile; they show the wear and tear of well-loved objects and scars and stains of lives lived.” The cloth is gathered from family, friends, and her extended community.

She then alters her collected materials through rending, rusting, and composting, embellishing them later with block printing, thermo-fax, embroidery, and paint. “I employ traditional methods of sewing construction in a contemporary way probing the tension between old and new and art and craft,” she explains.

In an interview with Textile Artist, Comeau talked about the importance textiles have in our day to day lives, saying that “textiles are an essential element of our daily lives: we are swaddled when born, we sleep in linens, we clothe our bodies each day, and we mark life’s passages with special garments and fabrics.”

“Each piece carries stories of countless human beings: who created, wore, gifted, graced their table with, or found comfort in it,” she says. The finished result is a thing of beauty, but also an homage to memory. See for yourself:

The post Merill Comeau Alters Vintage Textiles, Turning Them Into Pieces of Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her embroidery pieces are removed from their traditional support to adorn plastic and metal. Being trained originally as a sculptor, she juxtaposes different materials and techniques to create an illusion of depth and to reconsider the definition of two and three-dimensional compositions. In the end, the pieces present symbolic allegories and literary allusions – a sort of poetic artwork that demands a closer look.

“Experimenting with thread and making knotted bracelets has always been my favorite thing to do,” she recalled. “It has followed me until today. Whether it is by working with thread or by representing its knots in my embroidered pieces, its lines are always present.”

“My sketchbook contains a lot more words than drawings, however, the initial concept changes tremendously in the making,” she says, explaining about the thought process behind her designs. “The original idea succumbs to the act of materialization, yet prior to the end, the idea is investigated, deepened and deconstructed throughout the evolving phases.”

Follow her Instagram page for more:

The post The Unique Textile Art of Anouk Desloges appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Sorrell Chrystal Kerrison 

Sorrell Chrystal Kerrison employs traditional embroidery techniques, but puts a spin on them, creating embroidered portraits that are meant to look like Fauvist paintings. As part of her work, she was commissioned to create a portrait of the musician Andrew Hung for the cover of his debut solo album. “My techniques are a bit punk and raw,” she told Textile Artist, talking about her creative process. “I want to improvise as I go and I love it when accidental mistakes happen, rather than planning every aspect of a piece.”

Teresa Lim

Singapore-based illustrator and embroidery artist, Teresa Lim, makes embroidered portraits that are playful if a bit cartoonish. “I like being able to create new things every day,” she told Style Theory. “It’s what keeps me going.” With more than 85k followers on Instagram and collaborations with brands like Gucci and Swarovski – she might as well keep going. Here are some of her commissioned portraits:

Bisa Butler

Artist Bisa Butler creates quilt-like portraits using colorful African fabrics. Her acclaimed work explores questions of identity and tradition. “My portraits tell stories that may have been forgotten over time,” she explained. “When you see vintage lace and aged satin it tells you the story of delicacy and refinement of times gone by. When you see African printed cotton and mud cloth it tells the story of my ancestral homeland and the cradle of civilization.”

The post These Artists Use Fabric and Textile to Create Original Portraits appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Based in Reston, VA, she draws inspiration for her contemporary wall quilts from the view of nature outside her window. This inspiration is quite literal. “Pebbles on the path or currents in water might become part of the texture I stitch into each piece,” she writes. “Color combinations in bird feathers or flowering plants might slip into the palette I use to start my next design.”

Textile art also comes quite naturally to Grisdela, as she comes from a long line of women who have expressed themselves using a needle and thread (although, curiously, she notes that there were no quilters in her family). “Creating with various forms of fabric and thread has been a part of my life since I was a child,” she says, adding that she taught herself the ins and outs of the trade through trial and error.

Grisdela’s quilts are showcased and sold in fine art and fine craft shows nationwide and can be found in private collections all over the country.  She also teaches classes and workshops and is the author of Artful Improv: Explore Color Recipes, Building Blocks & Free Motion Quilting, published by C&T Publishing in November 2016. But you can also follow her work online, via Instagram:

The post This Quilt Maker Is Inspired by the View Outside Her Window appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I began quilting late 2013 when working for a fabric manufacturer,” she recalled in an interview with Brown Paper Bag. “I’d done many digital quilt designs there and understood the basic steps and terminology, and I thought that was enough to start on a project on my own. I dove right into a king-sized quilt using that experience.”

According to Marañon, the toughest step was the math she had to figure out to get the design to fit together. “Weeks later I completed assembling the top of the quilt, but to this day it remains unquilted, mostly because of its massive size,” she notes. “I’ve since learned that my preference is with smaller scales, and on pieces that are improvised rather than designed and calculated.”

Letting one step dictate the next, her approach to quilt making is now intuitive and imbues each piece with spontaneity. Her creations explore abstract landscapes, geometry, and repetition, highlighting details that would otherwise be considered flaws. Her personalized pieces emphasize, therefore, the hand of the artist, the result being quilts with uneven seams, raw edges and exposed thread ends. Inadvertently, these marks become the signifiers of reactionary behaviors and moods specific to each piece and its materials.

All of her quilts are designed and made by hand from her studio in Los Angeles using vintage and dead-stock fabrics whose histories are vivified with every limited item made. “I love exploring all sorts of possible outcomes by simply playing around with color, fabric, print, and texture,” says Marañon. “I am inspired most when I’m working, and ideas come in a frenzied rush and I just have to try new ways to lay out shapes, or new ways to mix mediums. Experimentation and fun definitely fuel my quilted projects, and that has to be the reason I’ve fallen in love with it.”

The post The Improvisational Quilts of Lorena Marañon appeared first on PlayJunkie.

But it’s her textile art that first caught our attention. Recreating everyday objects in realistic detail, her knitted and embroidered creations include anything from Ketchup bottles to Nike trainers. “I’m often inspired by very ‘normal’ everyday items, items that portray the luxury of choice and comfort in the western world, whilst at the same time hinting at the excess that is often taken for granted in a fast-paced, immediate society,” Dance relayed in an interview with Lifestyle Tails, adding that “the irony being each knitted or embroidered piece that I make has taken hours/days/weeks to create.”

“I always aim for my work to be graphical, with a playful edge,” she adds. “Knitting and embroidery is typically perceived as a ‘feminine craft’ however I try to take gender out of the equation when coming up with ideas. I always strive to produce a carefully considered design, with a strong concept, using quality materials.”

Much like her approach to art, her approach to interior design is entwined with craftsmanship. Describing herself as an interior designer with a holistic approach to designing homes and workplaces, Dance is known for her luxury and contemporary interiors that have craftsmanship at the heart.

With so much going on for her, her days are very much packed. “I’m usually sculpting, knitting or stitching, which is always good time to put a podcast or music on…. or if I’m trying to work something out or write, I need total silence,” she describes her workday. “I usually work until around 6 depending on what I’m working on,” she adds.

Follow her work through Instagram:

The post Jessica Dance’s Textile Art Has a Playful Edge to It appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Founded in 2015, Jade offers an eye-catching range of hand-drawn designs that celebrate the fascinating plants and animals living on our planet. By celebrating the shapes, forms, patterns, textures, and colors prevalent in our natural environment, she hopes to restore our affinity with nature.

“I hand draw all my designs, which creates quite a personal feel to my designs,” she relays the creative process in an interview with Jung Katz. “I then apply color (which is generally quite bold) and edit these hand-drawn images digitally using photoshop.” According to Jade, she enjoys combining hand drawings with digital design, to create her eye-popping repeated patterns. “My work is quite detailed and I generally use a pencil to create my patterns, however, I do enjoy combining pencil and paint, as I feel these two mediums create quite unique pattern designs,” she explains.

Inspired by plants, foliage, flowers, animals, she’s also fond of geometric prints and also designs that are inspired by natural textures. Fashion is another huge inspiration for Jade, as she loves keeping up to date with styles from the runway and current fashion trends. 

Her luxury design collections are available on wallpaper, textiles, upholstery fabrics, furniture, cushions, ceramic tiles, and flooring, with all products printed and made in the UK. Here are some of our favorites:

The post We Sense a Pattern with Charlotte Jade’s Designs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, but currently based in Asheville, North Carolina, Just grew up surrounded by textiles and learned weaving from her mom when she was a little girl. Having studied later fashion design, sculpture, and textile art, she specialized in weaving and embroidery.

“With my weavings I try to seek the pleasure between the relationship of a tactile versus a visual synesthesia, touching colors, listening to textures, tasting shapes, perceiving colors represented by certain shapes, and vice versa,” she shared in an interview with Sarah K. Benning. “But especially, my purpose is to share this experience with everyone else and give them some colorful goosebumps.”

Using old weaving techniques, she adds a contemporary twist to her work by using vibrant color combinations and beautiful vintage threads. “As I’m weaving, I usually go crazy jumping on many diverse ideas at the same time like a distracted butterfly,” she jokes. “I try to make fast sketches and secure some of the color combinations that suddenly pop on my mind, as fast as possible.”

Take a look at some of her original designs in the gallery below:

The post Judit Just’s Colorful Tapestries Are Great Fun appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Having studied fine art, she began drawing with thread to pursue both passions – of embroidery and drawing. “Embroidery became my own private refuge,” she shared with Textile Artist. “The effects of embroidery seemed otherworldly and captured my imagination as the perfect way to explore secret thoughts.”

Indeed, her work seems to explore psychological landscapes, illuminating thoughts left unspoken. Literary snippets, memories, personal mythologies, and art historical references inform the imagery. Fused together, these influences explore relationships, domesticity, and self-perception.

“Embroidery also comes with a lot of baggage,” says Kingdom. “It has often been dismissed and overlooked; perceived as decorative, a school-girl craft, fussily old-fashioned, small. And that is precisely what attracted me to it. It’s deceptively pretty, unapologetically female, traditional and naive. It speaks in tiny whispers, and only those that care to listen can hear it. My work tries to capture murky ideas brewing around in my head, and the evocative nature of figures in stitch better conveys those ideas than other mediums can.”

Take a look at some of her murky ideas come to life through the use of needle and thread:

The post Michelle Kingdom’s Embroidery Art Speaks In Tiny Whispers appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I use thread as a tool for drawing,” she explained in an interview with Textile Artist. “This could be fine silk for stitching by hand and machine or wool, rope, wire or perhaps even plastic washing line.” It’s a process that absorbs hours on end and she admits she often finds herself at 2 AM wondering where the time went.

Her work, featuring mostly portraits and townscapes, tends to befuddle the viewer, seeming at first like a pen and ink drawing – but turning out to be something altogether different upon closer inspection.

“I love drawing, so that is the main focus of my work, says Cryer. “It has developed over time into experimenting with scale and using different media. My work ranges from small intimate drawings with lots of tiny detail and texture, to large freely stitched loose images.”

Each executed mark, however small, is a decision made. “Drawing with thread is a continuous process of decision making,” she writes on her website. “Deciding what is required, for example, to conjure up a facial feature – exactly where the needle enters and exits the fabric, the type of thread, the length of each stitch, the number of stitches needed to suggest a smile or capture an emotional nuance.”

Take a look at some of her captivating work in the gallery below:

The post Andrea Cryer Uses Thread as a Tool for Drawing appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I am drawn to the discarded: clothes from friends and relatives, paper ephemera, and vintage linens,” she writes on her website. “These disparate materials were all once utile; they show the wear and tear of well-loved objects and scars and stains of lives lived.” The cloth is gathered from family, friends, and her extended community.

She then alters her collected materials through rending, rusting, and composting, embellishing them later with block printing, thermo-fax, embroidery, and paint. “I employ traditional methods of sewing construction in a contemporary way probing the tension between old and new and art and craft,” she explains.

In an interview with Textile Artist, Comeau talked about the importance textiles have in our day to day lives, saying that “textiles are an essential element of our daily lives: we are swaddled when born, we sleep in linens, we clothe our bodies each day, and we mark life’s passages with special garments and fabrics.”

“Each piece carries stories of countless human beings: who created, wore, gifted, graced their table with, or found comfort in it,” she says. The finished result is a thing of beauty, but also an homage to memory. See for yourself:

The post Merill Comeau Alters Vintage Textiles, Turning Them Into Pieces of Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her embroidery pieces are removed from their traditional support to adorn plastic and metal. Being trained originally as a sculptor, she juxtaposes different materials and techniques to create an illusion of depth and to reconsider the definition of two and three-dimensional compositions. In the end, the pieces present symbolic allegories and literary allusions – a sort of poetic artwork that demands a closer look.

“Experimenting with thread and making knotted bracelets has always been my favorite thing to do,” she recalled. “It has followed me until today. Whether it is by working with thread or by representing its knots in my embroidered pieces, its lines are always present.”

“My sketchbook contains a lot more words than drawings, however, the initial concept changes tremendously in the making,” she says, explaining about the thought process behind her designs. “The original idea succumbs to the act of materialization, yet prior to the end, the idea is investigated, deepened and deconstructed throughout the evolving phases.”

Follow her Instagram page for more:

The post The Unique Textile Art of Anouk Desloges appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Sorrell Chrystal Kerrison 

Sorrell Chrystal Kerrison employs traditional embroidery techniques, but puts a spin on them, creating embroidered portraits that are meant to look like Fauvist paintings. As part of her work, she was commissioned to create a portrait of the musician Andrew Hung for the cover of his debut solo album. “My techniques are a bit punk and raw,” she told Textile Artist, talking about her creative process. “I want to improvise as I go and I love it when accidental mistakes happen, rather than planning every aspect of a piece.”

Teresa Lim

Singapore-based illustrator and embroidery artist, Teresa Lim, makes embroidered portraits that are playful if a bit cartoonish. “I like being able to create new things every day,” she told Style Theory. “It’s what keeps me going.” With more than 85k followers on Instagram and collaborations with brands like Gucci and Swarovski – she might as well keep going. Here are some of her commissioned portraits:

Bisa Butler

Artist Bisa Butler creates quilt-like portraits using colorful African fabrics. Her acclaimed work explores questions of identity and tradition. “My portraits tell stories that may have been forgotten over time,” she explained. “When you see vintage lace and aged satin it tells you the story of delicacy and refinement of times gone by. When you see African printed cotton and mud cloth it tells the story of my ancestral homeland and the cradle of civilization.”

The post These Artists Use Fabric and Textile to Create Original Portraits appeared first on PlayJunkie.