London based design studio, Raw Edges, recently presented ‘Selvedge’, a project specially designed for Danish textile manufacturer, Kvadrat, at the Milan Design Week 2012. The project is the brainchild of Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay and was modeled upon the ‘Hallingdal’, a fabric originally designed by Nanna Ditzel in 1965. Incidentally, the fabric was the first and most iconic fabric produced by Kvadrat. It has grown to explore new versions and color scales since then with the latest version being the Hallingdal 65.
The project’s unusual name was derived from the selvedge, which is the thicker line of fabric that forms the edge of raw fabric while it is still in a roll. The part is usually discarded and is never used in the end product. The designers from Raw Edges, however, have glorified the humble name of this reject strip and have drawn inspiration from it to craft and design Hallingdal 65 in such a way that it resembles the form of an armchair using a certain technique of unraveling threads.
The duo created colorful rims or stripes on the exterior of the fabric that closely resembles the selvedge of a piece of raw cloth. They achieved the effect by creating a hollow sleeve in the fabric by undoing warp and weft threads from within the woven surface. Two fabrics of different colors were then placed directly on top of each other and were stitched together with a transparent strip. The result of the tricky technique is the visually appealing design of ‘Selvedge’, which celebrates the linear elements of Hallingdal.
But despite the beauty of ‘Selvedge’, the designers of Raw Edges insist that Hallingdal 65 is lovely as it is. They said that it only needs to be spread out for its excellent qualities to be seen. They also attributed the process behind their work of art to being nothing but an experiment, explaining it as an attempt to unweave the fabric without marring its perfection.
Via: Designboom
