Swati Siotia, Textile Designer

A lovely new textile designer has introduced her art to me and she definitely is an up-and-coming textile artist. Although she does not have a shop or a blog, she is showing her work on Flickr and I hope everyone that reads this stops by and sees Swati’s stunning textile effects. This is the best part of being an editor in the art of felting that really pays off, when you are able to show a new designers work. Pictured above are a few of her gorgeous pieces and I urge you to go and see her collection. She plans to set up shop in the near future and I am sure she will be blogging soon. Let’s all welcome Swati to the USA and offer her some feedback.Swati Siotia moved from London is now a resident of Atlanta, Georgia after completing her masters in Textile Design. She received her BA in Textiles while studding in India, which has helped her to develop a strong sense of color and texture. Her final project in her MA was to create interesting surfaces combining weave and felt using Lamb’s wool and monofilament.

Her practice has been inspired from the everyday, transforming the ordinary using traditional craft techniques and unexpected materials.  The most important feature of her practice is the considerable amount of shrinkage that takes place during the finishing process, during which fibers such as wool are made to shrink violently, producing interesting bumps, folds and distortions when woven in combination with other non-shrinking fibers.

The juxtaposition of different materials and their qualities plays an integral part in the complexity of her work. By exploring the effects of woven structures in collaboration with felting after-treatments, a flat cloth will be transformed into a dimensional surface of interest. She is convinced that we can only access the full potential of the new developments and opportunities if we know and rethink the traditional techniques and the reasoning of our work.