Design Fundamentals: Motifs, Patterns and Colour
Design Fundamentals: Motifs, Patterns and Colour
The exam tests design vocabulary, repeat systems and colour decisions, always in terms of what a loom can actually reproduce at a given sett.
Core concepts
- Motif: the single unit (geometric, floral, animal, stylised, abstract). Pattern: the arrangement of motifs. Layout: border, field (buti/buta), all-over jaal, pallav/anchal, stripe, check.
- Repeats: full drop (straight), half drop (each column shifted by half the repeat), mirror/pointed, brick, random. Repeat size = the distance after which the design repeats in both directions.
- Balance: equal margins; a border must not crowd the pallav.
- Colour: hue (name), value (light/dark), saturation (purity). Schemes: monochrome, analogous (neighbours on the wheel), complementary (opposites, high contrast), triadic.
- Colour-and-weave effect: in a 2/2 twill woven with two contrasting colours, the cloth reads as a third tone at a distance because the eye mixes them optically.
Worked example
A 45-in sador is to carry 3-in butis spaced 6 in apart, centred. Number across = 45 ÷ 6 = 7.5. Use 7 motifs: motif span = 21 in, leaving 24 in to divide into 8 gaps of 3 in, giving equal margins instead of seven motifs crowded to one side.
Marks-losing traps
- Confusing value with hue: the same red reads differently on light and dark grounds.
- Treating half-drop as a full repeat - the vertical shift must be half the repeat.
- Designing motifs finer than the sett (EPI/PPI) can reproduce; small details vanish at 40 EPI.
- Using complementary colours in equal areas, which makes the cloth vibrate and look harsh.