Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

Stitches Of Sustainability: Empowering Women And Preserving Culture Through Pakko Embroidery, Rajesh Kumar, Dharmendra Bana, Deepali Bhatnagar

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Pakko embroidery, originating from Gujarat’s Kutch district, stands as a testament to the area's rich textile tradition, marrying exceptional craftsmanship with profound cultural narratives. Currently facing the challenge of conserving its heritage while adapting to the evolving demands of the modern world, this study aims to identify pathways for cultural and economic resurgence.

Pakko embroidery, renowned for its sturdiness and the detailed cheereli saankdi stitch, finds itself at a critical crossroads, battling declining engagement and integration into modern design paradigms. Initiatives to rejuvenate interest and establish sustainable practices for artisans are deemed critical for preserving this ancient art for future …

Lambani Textiles: Oscillating Between The Past And The Present, Beena Santosh Modathi, Anjali Karolia

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper examines the experiences of home-based women zardozi artisans in Bhopal, India, who use traditional embroidery skills to create fashionable products. It highlights the role of the traditional craft sector in promoting women's empowerment, enhancing economic well-being, and supporting sustainable development in the Global South. Through ethnographic research, including literature review and interviews, the study reveals the resilience of these artisans, many of whom come from low-income backgrounds with limited education. Despite modest earnings, Textiles embody narratives, legacies, and lineages. Indian traditional textiles, particularly those featuring strong Lambani embroidery, represent a dynamic interplay of ancestral techniques, motifs, and cultural …

Public Patriotism, Silent Dissent: Women And The Making Of Senninbari In Wartime Japan, Mariko Nagai

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the early years of the so-called “Fifteen Year War” (1931–1945), Japanese women and girls created senninbari when men received draft notices to serve. Often worn around soldiers’ waists underneath their uniforms, these sash-shaped talisman were embroidered with 1,000 red knots, each knot made by a woman. In a time when the Japanese government censored dissenting voices against its militaristic and nationalistic foreign and domestic policies, this government-encouraged gesture of stitching senninbari became one of the few ways in which women could voice their personal protests within patriarchal gender expressions (良妻賢母 “good wife, wise mother”). Senninbari’s design evolved with regional- …

Textile As Cultural Technology: The Evolution Of Robert Rauschenberg’S Jammers, 1975–6, Katya Oicherman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Robert Rauschenberg suggested that any material has a “humanitarian reportage” or a history built into it, that opens art to the “strange and unpredictable” experience only comparable to everyday reality. Developing this idea, I will focus on the Jammers, a series of works with significant textile presence produced in 1975–76, and discuss how Rauschenberg’s relationship to textiles evolved from treating them as “materials” to recognizing them as cultural technologies. In 1975 he was on a fellowship in Ahmedabad, India, a period of intense experimentation.

Textiles were already a significant presence in his art, playing a subservient role of materials …

Inconclusive Objects: Sample Making As Inquiry-Driven Practice, Etta Sandry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In Inconclusive Objects: Sample Making as Inquiry-driven Practice I will discuss craft sample making as a valuable practice of critical thought and experimentation. Craftspeople, artists, and designers make samples to practice technical skills and to demonstrate results on small scales. It is process work, typically used to learn a new technique or a hidden step on the way to a final product. However, as a cumulative process of research, material probing, and play, sampling is a critical aspect of design and creation. What can a closer study of sampling reveal about creative practice and knowledge production in craft and beyond? …

Textile Ways Of Thinking As A Trauma-Informed Design Tool To Research And Understand Communities, Smrti Ganesan, Nishanth Srikanth

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

There has been a shift in methodologies in the broader world of design. Today, co-design and participatory methods are a vital part of the modern designer's toolkit, and designers are finding new ways to interact with communities and design solutions that are more responsive to the actual needs of those communities.

Textile design has historically been a medium for expressing and processing traumatic experiences, reflecting individual and collective traumas in society. Textiles have also historically served not only as a form of artistic expression but also as a powerful tool in activism, particularly within feminist movements. Recent developments have seen …

Solidarity Dividend With Us Wool And Community Engagement To Address Socioeconomic Inequities, Helen X. Trejo, Angela Becerril

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As a long-standing natural fiber, wool provides an opportunity for community engagement and reflexive practice. Our process involved sourcing wool from US sheep and wool farms in lower income areas and hands-on textile development, and intersectional reflection. Being at a Hispanic Serving Institution, informed approaches to engage with concepts, such as the “zerosum paradigm” and “Solidarity Dividend” based on Heather McGhee’s NY Times Best Selling book “The Sum of Us.” It explores how racism affects intergenerational wealth among minorities. The zero-sum paradigm is the idea that progress is a tradeoff; benefits to some is at an expense for others. The …

Lavenz, Valenz, Levenxë, Lavexha, Lavenzka: Woven Felted Blankets From The Korçë Region In Southeastern Albania, Alexis Zoto

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will look at and document colors and patterns and motifs of woven and felted blankets from the Korçë region of southeastern Albania. Very little is published on these textiles. This paper will document the disappearing and under appreciated textile, and why are they no longer understood or valued. In Albania and in Albanian diaspora communities this textile has had different names in prewar, prewar Korçare dialect and now.

I will be drawing from information gathered interviewing parishioners who volunteered to share their heirlooms and information gathered from examining the textile(s). These heirlooms belong to members of multiple generations …

The Bridal Industry: Body Image And Sizing Charts, Natalie Knapp

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The apparel industry in the United States of America lacks a unified size chart. This inconsistency allows vanity sizing and individual retailers to preside over the systematic regulations of sizing. The bridal industry is the singular industry that is not affected by vanity sizing in the United States, which causes a plethora of issues when coupled with the media’s thin ideal and push of certain body standards.

The project utilized four sections of literature review: regarding sizing inconsistency, mass media and size dysphoria, United States standard of sizing, and brides and weight loss. Additionally, four different size charts from four …

Surfacing: A (Loose) Manual On Unlayering / Stuff-Making And Hypervisibility, Zoë Pulley

Masters Theses

This is a (loose) manual on a method I like to refer to as surfacing.

A method that synthesizes narrative through the use of surfaces such as textiles, paper, web & video to reveal the spectacularly ordinary parts of Black life within a growing design practice.

A method I (currently) practice in three (evolving) steps:

Unlayering and piecing together stuff (rememory)

Acknowledgment of ancestry through stuff-making (kin)

Consciousness of oneself and the place / time / space in which the work is being disseminated (hypervisibility)

This is a manual that profiles a (current) design practice of a Black female maker …

Iteration One, Julian Suver

Masters Theses

In the fashion world, companies put a lot of effort towards classifying their products as luxury to the consumer. The age of social media has aggrandized collaborations with famous artists, endorsements by celebrities and even the appointment of pop stars as directors of the biggest fashion houses in the world, as if this makes the clothing better. I can't help but question what luxury actually means when you strip away marketing and if this status can be given or taken away. If a silk dress gets irreparably stained or ripped is it still luxury? Is an old band T-shirt found …

The Meaning Of A Choice, Julie-Louise Zeitoun

Masters Theses

If you are disabled or disadvantaged, you will be dismissed and stifled. Few people will actively care for your struggles. As a person with autism, I was deeply fearful of the persecution I had faced throughout my life; it was a fear that followed me with terrifying determination. I desperately wanted to blend into society. So I designed myself to be devoid of any weakness, and productivity was the way I chose to conceal any difficulties I faced. It was a way to measure my success — a way to measure my normalcy.

Standard medical textiles are generic, cumbersome devices. …

Wasteful To Useful: Investigating The Metamorphosis Of Textile For Construction Methods, Elizabeth Rodriguez

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Every year, the average American generates over 80 pounds of textile waste. Since the 1990s, consumer behavior has shifted as mass production of items has become the norm. Production of clothing alone already impacts the environment as it requires immense amounts of chemicals, energy, water, and other natural resources. So, when consumers throw away clothing and brands decide to discard overproduced items, it ends up in landfills where it takes over 200+ years to decompose. Furthermore, a large percentage of unwanted clothing will be sent off to third-world countries to try to resale or recycle. Yet, the amount being imported …

Ricucire Il Tessuto Della Società: L’Intersezione Di Moda Femminile E Femminismo, Caroline Grace Bisese

Honors Theses

La moda è tutt'altro che una conseguenza frivola e accidentale dell'abbigliamento disponibile e del luogo in cui si va a fare shopping. L’abbigliamento è una forma di retorica corporea che evoca un ampio dialogo non verbale. Una narrazione che va ben oltre il materiale e lo stile, sebbene entrambi questi dettagli sono fondamentali, la moda al livello più elementare è essenziale per capire chi sono le persone, perché sono come sono e in cosa credono. Queste sono alcune dei capisaldi per capire una persona in relazione alla cultura e una cultura in conseguenza delle persone che la compongono. È una …

Between Specificity And Myth: An Analysis Of Carlos Mérida's 'Mexican Costume', Sofia Ortega-Guerrero

Kaplan Senior Essay Prize for Use of Library Special Collections

Sitting evenly upon close-toothed paper, vivid pigments compose harmonies of color and form (Fig. 1). Lines of cerulean wiggle upon a velvety cobalt blue. Between crisp boundaries of ink, veins of the white folio carve out a lattice and tapered fringe to impart legibility: a striped, blue shawl generously cloaks a figure, who nearly disappears beneath her dress. Cinched by a violet-vermillion belt, three bunches of black and white pleats fold in rhythmic lines. A small, low-heeled shoe peeks from below the voluminous skirt, recalling the figure beneath the fabric. From the abundant shawl, a head emerges in profile with …

Creating A 1940s Costume: A Historical Investigation, Jennifer Mott

The Confluence

The purpose of this Art History research investigation was to create a costume from the 1940s by immersing myself in a time period when people often made their own clothing. This was done to better understand what it means to have a personal connection to the items I wear. Our experiences as consumers in the twenty-first century are vastly different than those belonging to the people that lived during the mid-twentieth century because almost all of our clothing is purchased from corporations and created by people that we will likely never meet. For this investigative study, I shopped for and …

Understanding Consumers' Use Experience On Electrically Heated Jacket: A Study On Online Review Using Topic Modeling, Md Nakib-Ul Hasan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The demand for heated jackets is anticipated to be fuelled by frequent temperature drops, severe winter weather, and increasing outdoor activities. Electrically heated jackets (EHJ) are primarily marketed through online distribution channels and expansion of online sales channels is expected to boost the global market. Consumers are increasingly relying on online reviews from other consumers to help them decide what to buy. Businesses also actively monitor and manage their online reviews to build trust in their brand and make it more likely that customers will buy. Traditional approaches for assessing customer behavior, such as market research surveys and focus groups, …

Creating Adaptive Face Masks With Clear Inserts To Aid People With Hearing Loss, Blare Offenbacker

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to create adaptive face masks with clear inserts to aid individuals with hearing loss. In early 2020, when the world went into lockdown and quarantine, guidelines were set by the Center of Disease Control (CDC) on how to protect yourself from Covid-19. Covid-19 is also known as SARS-CoV-2, which is severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2. The main protection against Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic was the use of face masks that covered the nose and mouth. This has been a continued recommendation for protection against Covid-19 with the different variants …

Skins+Fabrications: Addressing Fashion And Clothing Waste, Renee Palmer

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Articles of clothing; they are the second organ, the Second Skin. Their functions are to protect the body from the harsh external elements and create a sense of design with Fashion—the same as exterior facades on a building. However, where architecture and Fashion differ is sustainability.

The Global fashion industry contributes 10% of greenhouse emissions. From that 10%, about 13 million tonnes of clothing waste ends up in landfills or burned. Most of the waste comes from the Fast Fashion Industry, which sees cheap labor from underdeveloped countries to maximize profits. These companies will spend a good portion of their …

Apparel Students' Perception Of Denim Quality In Relation To Price And Brand, Karli Haws

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to evaluate apparel students’ perception of quality in denim jeans based on the influences of price and brand. The following research objectives were developed:

1. To determine if apparel students’ perceptions of garment quality are affected by price and brand.

2. To determine how apparel students perceive quality in a garment.

3. To determine if price and brand are indicators of quality to apparel students.

Fashsim Lab: Learning About Cotton From Field To Virtual Fashion, Kelly Cobb, Angela Beckett

Frameless

The global pandemic is clearly illuminating the value and even necessity of online education and remote learning for students around the world (IIIE, 2020.) Virtual modules engage students, substituting valuable learning experiences that are not possible to recreate due to constraints on time and/or materials, or physical meeting ability, demonstrated by the pivot due to COVID. In the virtual lab, students are able to work together, applying course concepts to new situations and contexts, as well as develop data analysis skills. Common in the sciences, this novel concept embeds state-of-the art learning into the textile and apparel curriculum. In the …

“Any Lady Can Now Learn To Cut Perfect Fitting Dresses”: The Role Of Pattern Drafting Systems In The Production Of Women’S Dress, 1880–1900, Alyssa Smith

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research conveys findings from my MA thesis research focused on pattern drafting systems for women’s garments developed between 1880 and 1900. The study builds on the seminal work of Claudia Kidwell, who divided these systems into three categories: proportional, hybrid, and direct measure. To date, the study of this textile technology and how it positioned women and sewing in both domestic and professional spheres has received little scholarly attention, but pattern drafting technology transformed the possibilities for pattern creation and proportionate measurements, especially for home sewers. It also aided in the paper pattern and ready-made clothing industries. This research, …

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …

Covid-19 Masks In Terms Of Functional, Expressive, And Aesthetic Consumer Needs, Lily Highley

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to assess consumers' perspectives of COVID-19 masks under the functional, expressive, and aesthetic areas. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, masks have become an “accessory” to everyday life, and it was essential to research masks under these unique areas and explore consumer perceptions.

This study took place after background research on the topic and the FEA model. The study included a survey sent to Bumpers College students upon approval from the IRB. The data was analyzed and interpreted specifically in the FEA areas and can be useful to better understand the students at the University …

The Clothing Left Behind: A Collection Of Stories, Grace Coleman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Beyond its material use, clothing can have powerful emotional effects such as easing grief from personal loss or serving as a memory recall aid for individuals with dementia. It was during my graduate program that I became interested in exploring the idea that clothing can be powerful beyond its aesthetic. Peter Stallybrass’s essay Worn Worlds: Clothes, Mourning and the Life of Things highlighting clothing’s ability to evoke memories and emotions was influential in setting me on my path to research clothing’s connection to memories. Whether it was embodied identity, grief, dementia, mourning rituals, or collective mourning, I was looking at …

Printed Repeat Pattern Development For Textiles: Design Theory And Process, Erin Kelly

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

I created a collection of fifteen printed repeat patterns accompanied by a written description of the research and development process as a creative project to fulfill the requirements of a Senior Honors Project. Looking at this project from a traditional research standpoint, I sought out to answer several questions that would help me to develop as a textile artist. How do you find current, up-to-date, relevant trends, both ideological (macro) and material (micro)? How do you take these trends and communicate them visually, in an original fashion? How do you produce a collection of designs that is both diverse and …

Utilizing Repurposed Denim To Create Apparel For Those With Cerebral Palsy, Monique Rodriguez

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most common motor disability in children. In the U.S alone one million children and adults live with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy. Due to the increasing life expectancy of individuals with CP, the number of adults with this disorder is increasing, thus their medical and social care needs are changing (Moreno-De-Luca et al., 2012). For years children and adults who live with CP struggle in finding clothing that works for them and their needs. Currently the market for adaptable clothing is small. For people with CP, the lack of adaptive clothing creates large barriers whether …

Freedom Quilt: Collective Patchwork In Post-Communist Hungary, Christalena Hughmanick

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The paper investigates the democratic and social values of patchwork quilting through its culture of open-source pattern sharing and communal group work – using The Freedom Quilt Hungary project as a primary example. I facilitated a social engagement artwork, developed in 2019 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the end of Socialist rule in Hungary in 1989. This change resulted in new laws, allowing for the formation of the Hungarian Patchwork Guild (HPG), with whom I worked closely to create the work. It provided members of this group and the public with a platform to define individual notions …

Prejudiced Commodities: Understanding Knowledge Transfer From India To Britain Through Printed And Painted Calicoes, 1720-1780, Aditi Khare

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The eighteenth-century trade in calico between Europe and India was a function of global textile manufacture, exchange, and consumption on multiple levels. This trade had several political, cultural, and economic consequences— the most important of which, I suggest, was the transfer of useful knowledge from artisanal oral textile traditions in India to the receptive, commercial, and nascent cotton printing industry in Europe.

This paper explores the contribution of Indian cotton printing knowledge towards the development of Europe’s cotton industry and, consequently, its dissemination through European knowledge networks. In particular, the largely overlooked chemical knowledge pertaining to dyes and mordants responsible …