Color Buds? Bullygums? Amys?

How do you name something that may be new? There's definitely the hurdle of convincing yourself you've really done something unique, but let's ignore that little voice, ok? Last November I started working on what to call my riff on the "faux chenille" technique of slashed fabrics. If you've seen my PARTY SAVERS clothing or my hats, you'll have seen the Lego-like pieces dotted over the fabric.

Yes, it's a lot of work! Before all those dashes and dots are placed on the fabric, they have to be made. It's a quilting process, then a cutting process. I am essentially creating all the "Legos" in whatever thickness, length and color I want. It's pretty easy to get lost in this initial process because it's so satisfying. I have a chart of what they look like in different color combos and layers.

Color samples of my chenille "color buds". You can see they are all uniform except for Turquoise, which was made incorrectly.

So, naming. I love words and I used to write poetry near-constantly. I decided to investigate languages adjacent to English using synonyms or sense words I associated with this process. A metamorphosis was necessary to truly capture what to call this process, so I looked to the wackiest Romance language (in terms of spelling): French. There is plenty of extra gunk in the spelling of French words to manipulate and, most importantly for this project, misunderstand, chop and screw. I would take a French word and rewrite it as it looked phonetically if you COULDN'T pronounce French. (Guess what-- I can't!) For example:

Bumpy = cahoteux, pronounced properly as cow-o-tuh or phonetically (in an English brain) as cah-ho-tee-ucks. I then take cah-ho-tee-ucks and say it many times fast, until it softens down to cahotixe. Then I further tumble it in time and tongues (the same way we get "apps" or "Schedj" and come out with tee-ucks > teeks > tiques. From the English word "bumpy" to the completely fabricated word "tiques". Could also be spelled teeks or teeks. Like a sentence put through a translation app, back and forth between multiple languages, so weird new form comes out. This happens naturally in language, but usually over a much longer time.

English	French	French phonetic	Idiot phonetic	Mishmash
Pimply	boutonneux	bo-tew-new	boutonux	bootoonoo
Loud	tapageur	ta-pa-zhur	ta-pay-ger
Touch	effleurer	ih-flor-ay	ifflery
Fidget	bouger	boo-zhee	bourgie	boozhee
Jewel	bijou	bee-zhou	beezu
Gumdrop	boule de gomme	bull-de-gum		bullygum
Pill	pilule	pill-you-leh	pilloola
Tablet	comprime	com-pray-me	compramy
Padded	rembourré	ruhm-burr-ee	rumbery
Plump	dodue	doe-jew	doju*
Flounce	volant	voe-lahn	vahloun	volloon

*In this process I learned that "doju" is Yoruba for "face", so I was having a very good time

No, it's not a linear process. Doesn't have to be. Take a word, turn it over in your mouth, toss it into the air, let some light refract through it, hear a funny joke, smell a strange smell, catch the word again and look at it like it's something you've never seen before. When I was 4 or 5, I noticed that if I hung my head off the side of my bed I would see my room upside down-- it looked like a different room. If I thought about it too hard, it was just the same room I fell asleep in every night. But if I let my mind relax and flipped over, my hair dangling, I saw a new place I'd never been before. Who would come through the door now?

I'm still not sure what to call this process. My niece Hazel and I said the words "flannel buds" at the same time, and that seemed like kismet. I am also fond of color buds, bullygums and bootoonoo. Is it silly to try to come up with a name so that something can be traced back to you? More than ever, names are very important-- otherwise the government wouldn't be renaming some things and outright erasing others. Am I bringing up the dire circumstances in the United States in the same blog post as a craft process? Yes, it's unavoidable! So I'll avoid it for a bit more!

Faux Chenille, a technique in which several layers of cotton flannel fabric are quilted on the bias (that's a 45 degree angle against the grain) then all but the bottom-most layer is cut in between the lines. That means you've got one layer at the bottom that is serving as the "ground" everything else is attached to, like long, skinny hedges. When this goes through the washer and dryer, the heat, agitation and soap causes the cut edges to unravel. But since fabric cut on the bias is resistant to completely unraveling, only a tiny bit comes loose and gets fuzzy. If you have multiple layers, then you get fuzzier results.

This is a blanket made in the faux chenille process. It's super common for baby blankets because the texture is quite nice for babies. This blanket was 4 layers thick-- the topmost two layers (blue and yellow) were sliced between rows of stitching.

The image on the left is a close-up of the process I use, which is a few steps outside of the faux chenille process used in baby blankets. Could one call it deconstructed? Sure! I deconstruct sometimes until it falls apart into confetti. I'm obsessed. Instead of only slicing the quilted flannel through all but one layer, I slice it cleanly apart, through all layers. I slice it into little strips, then take those little strips and make dashes and dots. You can see clearly from the two photos above that the stacks look vaguely block-like on the left, then after a wash/dry the outside cut edges of each "block" fuzz up, creating a more rounded pompom-like look.

I don't want to claim this as my own in a monetary way, but I do want to be noted as the intrepid destroyer who figured out how to make a baby blanket infinitely more complicated. It's a pleasure to work with, and the results are so tactile, soft and fidgety. One day in the future, I'd like to see someone making stuff like this and say, "Oh yeah, it's this process called _________" and there will be my word.

What will that word be?