ATV1: What are textiles?

In my view textiles are materials that are constructed, woven, knitted, crocheted etc, and that we use for clothing, for home wares such as rugs and bedding, and for decorative purposes such as wall hangings. But textiles can be broader than that. If you weave with electrical wire is it still a textile? If you knit with balloons? If a non textile material such as such say paper is stitched into, when does it tip into being a textile? I’m going to sit with this and get back on it shortly.

Textiles are not always just for wrapping ourselves in, without thought other than with our comfort. Textiles can be sentimental, a vintage dress inherited from granny, a beautiful scrap of lace found in a market, textiles are often infused with emotion and stories and memories. I’m a quilt maker among other things and making quilts out of outgrown baby clothes or a late father’s shirts is a way of making a new textile from old ones with stories attached to them. Then there’s the stories such as how the textile is made, where it came from, where we bought it, on what kind of a day and in what kind of a mood, what story does the colour or texture conjure up, what is the history of this piece, what would it be able to tell us of it could speak, of being in the possession of a queen or of being printed on a tropical island…