Silk pillows and how I got into making them
My name is Isaac Koole and I live and work in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Designing silk pillows never entered my mind in the more than 30 years that I have been working as a tailor and textural designer. My primary interests are costume design for theater and avant garde clothing design. Over the years I became proficient in practically all aspects of working with textiles. Dressing stage productions was my favorite work, because of the opportunities it gave me to experiment with shapes and colors. In the 1990s I retired from theater work and decided to spend some years traveling the world and living in different places like Bangkok, Thailand and San Diego, USA.
After I returned to Holland I happened upon the book "The dictionary of quilt- and patchwork techniques" by Katharine Guerrier (still available at Amazon.com), a wonderful guide about, among other things, how many of the traditional quilt patterns are created. After reading it I couldn't wait to start making patchwork designs myself. Out of silk, of course, my favorite material. Instead of making quilts, I decided on pillow design and started sewing silk pillows. Making decorative throw pillows is much less time consuming -although it still takes me up to 25 hours to create one- and costly than making quilts out of silk, and equally rewarding when they turn out well.
I made my first pillow a year and a half ago and haven't been able to stop since. You can see the results on this site.
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