Wool pyramids form origami-inspired Bloom blanket
Brazilian designer Bianca Cheng Costanzo has created a woollen blanket from 180 triangles hand-sewn into tessellated pyramids (+ slideshow).
The triangles for each Bloom blanket are cut using computer numerically controlled (CNC) fabric routers to Costanzo's digital design.
The pieces are sewn together by a team of seamstresses, who spend five hours stitching the triangles along their edges into tetrahedrons and then combining the 3D shapes into a larger sheet.
"Bloom blanket is a design project rooted in the exploration of relationships between memory, art and maths," said the designer. "Geometrist Ron Resch's research into tessellations in the 1960s influenced me to craft a blanket that was not only visually intriguing, but also incredibly warm and soft to the touch, enveloping you with its continuous geometry."
Available in grey or white, the textile is composed of a 20 per cent cashmere and 80 per cent wool blend.
The material is custom-woven to Costanzo's specifications at a factory in Prato, Italy – an area renowned for cashmere, a soft fibre woven from goat hair.
"The blanket is a representation of an intricate three-dimensional origami tessellation pattern," Costanzo told Dezeen. "As a child I was drawn to geometric shapes and spent my playtime experimenting with origami, but it was only while studying at MIT that I realised how intricate the study of geometry could become."
"I learned how to apply this way of thinking to engineering, but I didn't want to stop there," she added. "I wondered how it could be applied to design."
The Bloom blanket was successfully funded on Kickstarter earlier this year and production will now begin in Poland.