The Quilt Collection, New in the Library

New in the Design Pool library, The Quilt Collection, designed by Kristen Dettoni. Kristen has always had a fascination with quilts. “The quilts I grew up surrounded by always had a lot of personal meaning. They held a special place in my heart, made by people who loved me.” Kristen wanted to create a collection of digital designs that inspired the same comfort and warmth of quilts. By using these designs in places such as healthcare interiors, perhaps Kristen could help generate a sense of nostalgia and comfort in otherwise cool and impersonal spaces.

What is a quilt?

According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, “Quilting is a method of stitching layers of material together. Although there are some variations, a quilt usually means a bed cover made of two layers of fabric with a layer of padding (wadding) in between, held together by lines of stitching. The stitches are usually based on a pattern or design.”  

The word quilt comes from the Latin word culcita, meaning to bolster or cushion. It seems to have first been used in English in the 13^th century. Historians trace quilted items as far back as medieval times when men wore them under armor for warmth and comfort.

Yet quilts are so much more than functional textiles. Quilting has a rich history that touches nearly every corner of the globe. “Quilts are rituals of life,” writes William and Paul Arnett in the book The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. They continue, “Along with shelter, the quilt safeguards the human body during its greatest vulnerability, sleep.” Quilts serve the most basic function of providing warmth, but they do so much more than just that. They also serve as time capsules about a person and place. Made with precious fabric scraps or repurposed older garments, quilts give us insight into the fabrics people used and wore at a moment in time.

In the catalog accompanying the Museum of Fine Art exhibit Fabric of a Nation, American Quilt Stories, director Matthew Teitelbaum wrote, “Whether made for public display or for intimate private use, quilts provide a window into their era and visually narrate often-invisible American experiences. Within a quilt’s fibers, materials, patterns, and decoration are embedded larger stories of industrial production, politics, social change and communities along with the personal stories of families.”

What was the spark of inspiration for this collection?

As a textile designer, Kristen looks for inspiration in places where aesthetics and function overlap. Few places do that more effectively than quilts. They are at once technically challenging to make and places for creative expression, showing us the creative spirit of the person who made it. In some cases, quilts can be very artistic. For example, the quilts in Gee’s Bend. These quilts brought sophisticated modern art into the homes of an entire community while keeping their loved ones warm.

Likewise, hundreds of quilts were made by volunteers of the Canadian Red Cross and shipped to Europe after the Second World War. Through quilting, people provided comfort and beauty to total strangers who had lost everything.

So, what’s in the Quilt Collection?

This collection features eleven designs inspired by quilts Kristen had growing up, the few quilts she’s made along the way, and the quilting process itself. For these patterns, Kristen created a unique digital quilt texture that she utilized to give the illusion of quilting on otherwise flat designs.

These patterns all have a modern feel yet inspire a sense of nostalgia. These patterns work particularly well in healthcare interiors, adding feelings of comfort and happy memories to materials that meet the performance required for healthcare environments.  

All these patterns are in the licensable library and ready to use. Simply click on the material you’re interested in from any product page to get started using that pattern in your next commercial interior project.

(Interested in learning more about quilts? We highly recommend the podcast Haptic and Hue to learn about the Canadian Red Cross quilts and the quilts of Gee’s Bend.)