PLAID

Since we're on fabrics, and fabric design, let's talk about straight lines.

Straight lines are parallel to the top edge of a piece of fabric, or, they are parallel to the side edge of a piece of fabric. You can imagine that: parallel lines that are vertical or parallel lines that are horizontal on a piece of fabric, and in varying colors. You can have navy on white, or white on navy, for instance, or any number of other color combinations ad infinitum, and of any size of stripes: any sizes or colors that come to your imagination. It's an easy experiment, to try different colors and sizes along these lines, on your sketch paper. (You can use a ruler: I do.)

Now consider a piece of fabric that has straight lines going vertically and also straight lines that form the horizontal pattern. Together they mesh, along the expanse of the 2-dimensional fabric, criss-crossing endlessly, "up-and-down" along with "left-to-right". This has often been called "plaid", and, though it is not limited to this, men's shirts from time immemorial have been made from plaid flannel. These particular plaids come in "manly" colors such as shades of brown and tan and black and cream, blues and greens and yellows, and especially shades of red, with some brown and white. All with lines that are straight as an arrow, going in "two dimensions"!

ee - ko - sheek

Fabric is another 2-dimensional art form. One dimension one way, another dimension another way. That makes two! (It sometimes comes under the heading of "surface design".) Fabric is certainly a 2-dimensional aspect of our life, and worthwhile considering as an art form.

The other day I came across a fabric line called "Eco-chic". This is a fabric full of small, circular holes, and they described it as a "punched-out holey grid pattern" which says it all, except for the "ecological" part. It actually consists of holes; I would call it a "tweaked sheer" in a systematic grid. Definitely something you can see right through.

It was hanging in a looped curtain, like an aurora borealis seen in the sky during the Northern Lights-Show, and my imagination envisioned it, not just only in a beauty salon, but in a young girl's bedroom, and as a party decoration, and as part of a theatre set or a TV set, or by the pool, or as department store or retail decor, etc. Pieces of it, or scraps, could also be used effectively in design collage......