Abstract
Driven by the potential of smart textiles, shape-changing structures, living textiles, and sustainable manufacturing methods, designers seek to push the boundaries of weaving. However, most existing industrial technologies are designed for mass-producing simple, flat fabrics. This has narrowed the collective understanding of the design potential of woven textiles, thereby restricting the development of complex, three-dimensional, and animated textiles. We present a toolkit, developed through an exploratory workshop and focus group discussions with academic and industry-based designers, that enables exploration and expansion of the design space for woven textiles. The card deck and canvas provide a shared language to externalise and interrogate existing ways of thinking, while a modified frame loom enables hands-on exploration of new possibilities. The toolkit demonstrates how combining analytical reflection with hands-on making offers both techniques and a vocabulary for unconventional textile design while providing a method to critically examine production systems in the textile industry.
Keywords
Textile Design, Weaving, Woven textile-forms, Design tools
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1440
Citation
Voorwinden, M., Klop, S., and McQuillan, H. (2026) Designing a toolkit to explore the Design Space of Woven Textiles, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1440
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Designing a toolkit to explore the Design Space of Woven Textiles
Driven by the potential of smart textiles, shape-changing structures, living textiles, and sustainable manufacturing methods, designers seek to push the boundaries of weaving. However, most existing industrial technologies are designed for mass-producing simple, flat fabrics. This has narrowed the collective understanding of the design potential of woven textiles, thereby restricting the development of complex, three-dimensional, and animated textiles. We present a toolkit, developed through an exploratory workshop and focus group discussions with academic and industry-based designers, that enables exploration and expansion of the design space for woven textiles. The card deck and canvas provide a shared language to externalise and interrogate existing ways of thinking, while a modified frame loom enables hands-on exploration of new possibilities. The toolkit demonstrates how combining analytical reflection with hands-on making offers both techniques and a vocabulary for unconventional textile design while providing a method to critically examine production systems in the textile industry.