When I reached out to Rita at Cross Lights for a residency, I had seen a project she had done previously based off of azulejo tiles, and I knew I wanted to do something similar inspired by the city of Lisbon. As I walked around Lisbon for inspiration, what struck me about the azulejo tiles was the hand painted nature of the tiles, which caused each tile to be slightly different even with the same design. Most of the tiles were varying shades of blue, balanced with white and some other pop color such as yellow or green.

Rita’s specialty was using recycled yarn swatches that had been discarded by bigger fashion brands. I settled on taking various white and blue swatches and weaving with two colors at a time to create an inconsistent coloring while still keeping to a color scheme. I added a bit of pop and texture with some lines of red, inspired by the blue and red combination of the Lisbon metro train cars.

After weaving a square piece of fabric, I cut it up and sewed it into the final seat cushion.