10 Mar Texture Tuesday: Tinkering with Texture for Pillow Art Challenge

Happy #TextureTuesday friends! It’s that time of year again to step outside my comfort zone. Yesterday, I decided to enter a “Pillow Art Challenge” sponsored by #BDWest, a boutique design trade fair in San Diego April 8-9, 2015. The trade fair focuses on design in the hospitality industry with some boutique hotels, which is a group I’ve always wanted to learn more about. Here’s a press release announcing “Boutique Design Magazine Announces Boutique 18 Honorees for 2015”. Quite an impressive list! I’m enjoying perusing their websites for inspiration and at Krause + Sawyer I learned about Tracey Sawyer and a product company she founded called The Nought Collective.  I really enjoyed reading about their handcrafted rugs!

Photo from The Nought Collective website. I love all the texture the picture captures!

A dream of mine one day is to have a Deborah Main luxury pillow on every bed in a boutique hotel. 

And I’d love to be able to find a way in the future to give back to the world community like so many wonderful businesses do, helping craftsman and women all over the world.  I love donating pillows to silent auctions to help raise funds for so many wonderful charities, but I always feel there must be something else I can do as well.

One great thing about this “Pillow Art Challenge”  – the proceeds of the sales of the pillows benefit “Invincible Me”, a charity dedicated to fostering hidden talents of battered women by providing support to help build their confidence and life skills.

Above is some of Deborah Main Designs‘ vintage French trim in a textured neutral weave and a wonderful raised orange chenille weave.  This is just a fraction of the vast collection of traditional and modern vintage French trim we carry. Isn’t it yummy?

Below is a fun orange, tan, white and brown mid-century Tiki print that was very popular. I was thrilled to be able to score an entire bolt of this textured fabric. I tried to get a real close up image so you could see the textured weave. Very linen like, but this is more of a Barkcloth-type textile.

 I thought by entering the “Pillow Art Challenge” it would help me learn more about the hospitality world – which is everything from large hotel companies and luxury resorts, like The Four Seasons, to boutique hotels, like Austin’s own Hotel San Jose, (which I’m sure many SXSW fans are staying at when they descend upon South Congress this Friday!) to spas, like Travaasa Resort & Spa, a beautiful hill country retreat I can’t wait to escape to one day.

So today, in my studio, I started tinkering with these textures to get the creative juices flowing for my one pillow to submit for the “Pillow Art Challenge” entry. Let me know what you think and enjoy the textures I selected below for today’s #TextureTuesday.  And if you’re in Austin for SXSW have a blast and enjoy strolling around our fun city (I love to go to the vintage shops!) and catch plenty of free music. I heard the weather is supposed to be puuurty, so that’s on my list this wknd. Till then, enjoy! XO PG

Above is a very cool 1960’s deep orange rust textile that would look great with a shocking pink behind it or something a little more subdued.

Don’t know if you know that Deborah Main Designs makes custom pillows, but we do. Please contact us anytime at 512.447.9807 or inquire@deborahmaindesigns.com. and we’d be happy to design something unique for you.  I layered this fun hemp-like weave, above, over black faux crocodile suede for a custom pillow we made for a local interior design project.  It turned out very cool, which gives me some ideas.  Back to the studio! 🙂