Dreamweaver - Cinnamon
DMW 7192
Lookbook: Crossings by Dorothy Cosonas
Connections and Crossroads
Crossings by Dorothy Cosonas is a collection of four upholstery textiles inspired by a deeply personal story. The collection honors Cosonas’ mother, who was born and raised in Greece and attended a boarding school run by French nuns before immigrating to America. She lived her life at the intersection of these cultures. The late Mrs. Cosonas was taught the art of embroidery during her formal education, and the four patterns in this collection—Dreamweaver, Fable, Odyssey and Sampler—are based on the hand-embroidered objects she produced. The collection’s name, Crossings, refers both to the layered threads of cross-stitched embroidery and to the distances crossed by Cosonas’ mother.
The Textiles
Dreamweaver’s woven blends of color are formed using the same seven colors, in the same sequence, in the warp as in the weft. The eye blurs the textile’s colors together and picks out specific moments in the grid, creating the dreamlike effect of colors running together and then reforming into a soft plaid. The shifting colors and textured yarns call to mind the shifting tapestry of Cosonas’ mother’s life.
The embroidered objects that inspired Crossings were beautiful because of the intentional craft put into them by the late Mrs. Cosonas, and also because of the many decades during which these designed objects were part of the family’s daily life. Fable honors both the intentional designs Cosonas’ mother created and the way they’ve faded with time and use. Bright yarns dot the surface of the textile, fading hazily in and out from neutral backgrounds.
This unique, large-scale plaid was inspired by time-faded embroidery samplers made by the designer’s mother, where she demonstrated a variety of embroidery techniques. The classic cross-stitching she produced was translated by her daughter into a large-scale, distressed grid that was heat-transferred onto a luxurious velvet textile.
Inspired by the “mending practice” areas on a sampler Cosonas’ mother produced as a young woman, which involved layering stitch over stitch to darn worn material, Sampler overlays thousands of stitches across the upholstery textile surface. This first-of-its-kind textile lavishly explores the notion of “organized chaos,” with layers of matte and high-luster stitches that build upon each other to tell a singular story.
