The title of this project, ‘Hello shall we dance?’ is meant as an invitation for two design disciplines to meet: textile design and illustration. In the project, Louise Ravnløkke collaborates with the illustrator Signe Parkins to create narratives by combining the cartoon with the tactile qualities of the textile media.

This meeting between the two design disciplines came out as an installation consisting of 3 free-hanging tapestries and a series of 5 three-dimensional textile creatures telling an open and explorative story about friendship and the joint inspiration that can appear when connecting to someone you just met.

As a whole, the installation is a textile cartoon that invites you to explore and construct the story on your own by looking at the tapestries from different views and walking between the tactile props.

Some narrative elements are more abstract than others in combination with the different textile techniques used. Through digital knitting and digital textile printing, the drawn lines are transformed into textures of yarn and fabric. The textile media gives a sensorial layer to the narrative by using various textile techniques to create a three-dimensional effect of texture on the surface. Patchwork, quilting, and embroidery stitches are used to assemble textile elements as well as to enhance the textured layer.

The installation was shown at PINK POP POLYCHROME exhibition at Nicolai Art & Design in Kolding (DK), August-September 2014, and during the festival 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen, May 2016, in Offcinet as a part of the exhibition Textile and Digital Techniques.

The Collection HELLO

As the second outcome of the collaboration, the design of one of the exhibited tapestries was transformed into a series of blankets to be produced for a limited collection.

The collection of blankets consists of six colour variations, all with the motif of the cartoon Shall we dance? comprising a sequence of nine illustrations. The illustrations are on each end supplemented by a border of smaller and larger dotted patterns; small dots at one end and large dots at the other. The collection of blankets is kept in pastel colour variants of ‘breadcrumb’, ‘mustard’, ‘moss’, ‘sorrel’, ‘granny’ and ‘seagull’ with a graphic contrast in black and white. On the back of the blanket, the motif and colours are mirrored.

The blanket is knitted from 100% fine merino wool, which is lightly washed (felted) and decorated with a running stitch at one end. Each blanket comes with extra thread and a needle to make one's own marks as part of the narrative.