I've had a little more time for fun and crafting this last week and I used part of that time for an outing to The Textile Museum in DC with Kate. The museum had an exhibition entitled "Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain" that Kate had read about and it was really fabulous.
It displayed fabric by designers Lucienne Day, Jacqueline Groag and Marian Mahler.
The Textile Museum is small, but has a nice permanent collection and schedules really interesting temporary exhibitions. Kate and I read about exhibitions through 2011 that we'd like to go back and see.
I couldn't take many photos inside the exhibition - there was no photography inside the gallery. I did snap this shot at the entrance:
It gives an idea of the very cool fabric we had a chance to see. Kate and I were mentally sewing up all of the fabrics into drapes, chairs, dresses, shirts - it was inspiring stuff. And they did sell some of the fabric in the gift store. But as it ran over $200.00 (OMG!!!!!) we decided against a purchase.
I remembered while we were strolling through the museum that I had bought a set of pattern books, one of which covered textile patterns from the 50s. It contains some of the fabric we saw in the exhibition by Day, Mahler and Groag. V&A pattern books, series one is a set. It contains four pattern books. In addition to the Fifties patterns, there are pattern books covering William Morris, Indian Florals and Digital Pioneers. They all contain cd's with jpg images of the patterns that you can use for non-commercial purposes. Here are just a few of the VERY cool images in the pattern book that we also saw at the Textile Museum:
Marian Mahler
Lucienne Day
Jaqueline Groag
It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Looking at beautiful and inspiring textiles and catching up with a good friend who appreciates (or obsessively LOVES) fabric like me!