It’s impossible, at least for me, to look at fabric designs involving dots without undergoing a kind of involuntary Rorschach test. Without, that is, on some subliminal level, seeing the dots on fabric as living creatures. They line up in rows and columns, drift apart, or contend for space. They jostle against each other, step on each other’s toes and, at times, nearly manage to merge without quite ceasing to be dots. They live, move, and animate the fabric; no wonder so many designers use them.

The squarish dots with the dark green centers in the image to the right above are derived from plant forms, according to the description of this fabric at Etsy. (All images of fabric in this post are taken from Etsy sellers; click on a fabric to see its Etsy listing.) These dots remind me somehow of one-celled organisms – little animicules crowded tightly together in the process of merging or dividing. On the other hand, those dots above on the left suggest some kind of military drill – or else checkerboard fields of evenly planted crops. I love this pattern, both the color and the form, but the part of me intrigued by random disorder wonders what skirmishes would occur if a few small dots strayed into large-dot territory.

In the lefthand image above (necklaces, I guess), I see orderly lines of multi-sized dots, all held in place by thin vertical threads. Once again I imagine small eruptions of disorder. What if a thread or two broke, scattering dots here and there and turning the pattern of stripes into an all-over design? The image above to the right looks quite stable; I don’t imagine the dark spots migrating off the leopards. But what if the leopards themselves launched themselves into a leap, wreaking havoc among the white dots?

The two images above both use motifs known as millefiori (an Italian word meaning “a thousand flowers”) in a closely packed formation. But what a difference in the results! Motifs in the righthand picture have angular shard-like boundaries, and all manage to stay a safe (though tiny) distance apart. Motifs in the left hand picture, with their smooth, less threatening edges, crowd together amiably, cheek to cheek.

Am I reading too much into mere arrangements of dots? Hard to say, since fabric makes its appeal to us in sometimes very subtle and subliminal ways.