'Blauwsloten tas' takes you into a piece of Tilburg's history as a textile city. From the 19th century, the so-called blue ditches arose: rivers that were colored with indigo waste. This indigo waste came from the textile factories and was created by dyeing with indigo. At the bottom left you see the map of all the blue ditches in Tilburg.
I wanted people to relive this piece of history by creating a bag inspired on the map and felting the bag with the shibori felting technique. The (shibori) felting is made with natural material, mostly wool from the Pagan sheep. These sheep guard the Tilburg heath. This way a local product is used for reliving local history. I made the entire bag myself, from washing and carding the wool to stitching the panels.
Behind the concept
A lot of Tilburgs history as a textile city isn't visible and known anymore, which I think is a pity. So I took the literal map of the blue ditches as a starting point for this project. As shown you can see the process of taking the map and developing it into the form of the bag.
Process
From sketches to visualize my idea till pictures of the hand dyed wool, how I used shibori felting and connected the panels together.
Front
Side
Bag in use
