Xiaoyue Zhang 张潇月

A pile of spiders with my head covers all traces of the past, each with weaving legs.

In my life, webs and threads are important to me. Sometimes I felt my brain is a tangled of random threads.

They flows under my skin, in my blood and occupying all the space in my body.

They flows out, occupying the space around me.

I lived in a Family Buddihist Temple with my grandparents in my childhood. I learned traditional techniques with my grandmother, I meditated with my grandfather. Those memories and techniques became a web for me, I sitted in the middle of the web, catching all the good things like a spider. I am all I do, I am who I love. My mon always say I live a free life, without any plans, but schedule came out naturally. The key of living a free life is being free, the true me, the real identity deeply in my subconscious will come out a plan for me.

I am Xiaoyue.

I am Natalia.

I am a fashion farmer.

I am a life-style-brand designer.

I am a spider stored the threads in my brain.

There is a spider in the middle, and the spider's web occupied all the space around it.

Spider is an amazing creature, they never design their webs, they never design their frames.

Have you ever seen a spider draw a sketch before they start weaving?

I'm living a spider's life-style, find a frame then start working, follow the instinct and subconscious, a beautiful web just came out naturally.

It's a voice under my skin, abandon any figurative thinking, this language comes from my genes and subconscious.

What is Temari? What are the future possibilities of this technique? – In my childhood, my grandmother teach me how to make temari balls and how to weave bamboo backet. Temari ball is winding threads around some cotton or waste fabrics, then do embroidery on it, using embroidery stitches to catch the threads together.

What is random weave – Random weave is a traditional bamboo weave technique. It always used to make basket or sculptures, craftman just weave under the leads of their instinct and subconscious, without any pre-designed sketches. I replaced bamboo with threads.

What are the future possibilities of this technique?

After compared random weave with weave and knit, I find out this technique can make soft fabrics by recycled materials. Because this technique doesn't have any limition for the length or materials of the threads we use. So the underlogic of this technique can help us recycle some waste threads in our modern fashion industry.

Development on how to fix the way random weave – I use embroidery stitches to stitch the random weave piece, make the piece stronger. This discovery find some functional meaning of this weaving piece. By changing the direction of the threads according to our body shapes, it is possible to obtain garments that fits our body more closly when we move.

One-piece glove – I mixed threads with heat-melt threads, use melt reaction to glue the random weave piece, to make it stronger.

One-piece pocket

Exploring the functionality of one-piece garments

An exploration of the decorative nature of one-piece garments – Embroidery stitches are important as well, the more stitches it has, the stronger and thicker it gonna be.

Jacket – I did more stitches on the parts of the body where have less movements, leave more flexibility for the parts of the body where changes a lot. This green jacket is an one-piece garment, it remains me that this technique means a lot in one-piece production area.

See the future

These development courages me a lot, traditional techniques are dieing because some of them cannot fit in the mess production. But I beloeve the underlogic of traditional techniques can do more, these dieing techniques can create amazing modern creations.

accessory-design embroidery fashion garment hand-embroidery handmade handwoven recycle textile textile-waste

Combine the random weave technique with some exsited materials. When doing patchworks by cotton or wool or chemical fibrics, I leave some space, then use random weave technique to occupy the space.