There’s no such thing a an ugly piece of cloth. There may be lost or lonely fabrics, fabrics fabrics that have been damaged or strayed from their fashion era, fabrics that look good only when cut up into pieces and stitched into the company of others. But all fabrics have some use and potential for beauty. At least that’s my operating belief – and the principle behind a lot of patchwork and reuse.The same idea may apply to fabric motifs. The beauty comes from their placement and the way they interact as much from the motifs themselves. Plain circles (dots or balls, as below) don’t look plain anymore when laid out in a clever pseudo-random arrangement.

And placing dots within dots or varying their circular shape creates a huge variety of effects. All without overlapping the dots, putting them over a patterned ground, or joining them to each other by means of tendrils or stripes. Quite likely the drama of these designs depends on the austerity of the motifs and layout. To do so much with so little…
At the other extreme of textile design lie prints for Hawaiian shirts (complete with shorelines, volcanoes, and thatched-roof houses), toile de Jouy landscape prints with buildings and outdoor factories, and 20th century prints (and derivations thereof) with content ranging from Soviet tractors at work in the fields to art deco monkeys swinging through the jungle. In future posts I’ll be looking at some of these more pictorial fabric motifs.

Images in this article show items on sale at Etsy. Click on them to see the Etsy listings.