WE GATHER is a successful textiles studio in Brooklyn, New York. It�s active and bursting with life, just like the city that houses it and a multifaceted creative forge.
Whitney Crutchfield is the founder of WE GATHER and the designer whose passion for textiles continues to grow within the studio�s walls. The one who welcomes anyone who wants to get into the textile world through courses of various levels on weaving, dyeing and sewing. Allowing everyone to get to know about textiles to then incorporate it into their everyday lives. As Whitney likes to point out, we�ve all had dealings with fabrics from birth. Aren�t we immediately wrapped up and sheltered by sheets and blankets?
Coming from an art, design and mathematical background Whitney loves the combination of soft and bright colours. Restful in their grid-like frames with a textured outer layer, brimming with nuances and extremely straight lines at different heights.
Waste minimisation and being partial to natural fibres are at the heart of the mission statement at WE GATHER. This is another reason why Whitney was glad to be working with our yarns, choosing in particular
the cotton tape Stromboli and the cotton and linen yarn Cleopatra. In addition to these two is the King of natural dyes, or rather, Indigo. Therefore creating, with her loom, a practical interior design piece.
WE GATHER has created a rug for us. Now, it's over to Whitney who will describe it to us: �Hand-dyed and handwoven rugs were some of the first custom products that I tackled when I started WE GATHER, so I was excited to return to that format for this project. I used DHG�s indigo to resist-dye some of the natural-colored Cleopatra as well as a couple of balls of the Stromboli yarn in the Wolf colorway. Once those were rinsed and dried, I set about winding a warp using Cleopatra.
I loved dressing my floor loom with this yarn - it�s soft but sturdy, not itchy or too dry.�The weave structure for the rug relies heavily on the squish and heft of the Stromboli yarn as well as the lovely color range offered here. I planned a gradient of color moving from each edge toward the center of the rug, alternating picks of two colors at a time. It was an interesting challenge to blend the blues of the indigo-dyed yarns, the neutral cream and tan tones, and the warmer brights of this yarn. Since the entire rug is woven from cotton and linen, this piece is totally machine-washable and ready to work!"
We absolutely love this inspirational rug and also share Whitney�s mindset: textiles are always on hand to comfort us, both in the creating phase and when we are using it.
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