Amazing Textiles Explore the Sense of Touch

At first glance, Haptic Lab’s City Map Quilts looks like an expanse of soft white. A closer look reveals intricate stitching, yielding a touch-worthy surface that encompasses the map of famous cities, from Chicago (pictured here) to Paris. "My first quilted maps were meant to be wayfinding tools for the visually impaired," Fischer says. In addition to its City Quilts, the company also creates throw blankets that feature famous coasts and water sources like its Great Lakes Quilt.

The above image shows a close-up of the planning that goes into a City Map Quilt. “City Quilts are a sort of bridge between my architectural education and the craft skills I learned growing up in rural Wisconsin," Fischer says. "I use GIS data, satellite imagery, and USGS and NOAA charts to design each quilt pattern. But the quilts aren't just translations of maps—I'm not a big fan of the ‘maps on stuff’ design trend—because they are hand-quilted and subject to idiosyncrasies scaled to the human hand.” Haptic Lab also designed and created the Constellation Quilt, which features the night’s sky.

Fischer and Haptic Lab also create kites, from classic diamond-shaped kites with a patchwork tail, to innovative sailing ship kites. Fischer explains, “An interesting quality of haptics is the ability of our body's sense of touch to be extended—it's actually our only physical sense that can be extended beyond our body. For example, when someone uses a cane to guide themselves safely down a sidewalk, the tip of that cane acts like the tip of their finger. Similarly, kites allow us to experience the sensation of flight.”

Haptic Lab continues to expand its offerings, including its new coastal quilt series, which will feature even more designs for the holiday season. Says the designer, “I want to privilege the real, physical world our bodies occupy through design; to make someone put down their iPhone for a moment, to play, and to experience a profound feeling of embodiment.”