Rima Day Creates Amazing Textile Art With Red Thread

If you have a vision and talent, it doesn’t take much to create extraordinary works of art. Textile artist and fashion designer Rima Day is case in point. She made a name for herself by crafting amazing textile art, using nothing but a needle and some red thread.

Day studied fashion design, both in her native country of Japan and while working as a ballet costumer in New York City and Connecticut. She later started exploring the possibilities of textile art, initially making 18th-century dresses with upcycled jeans before turning to textile art inspired by her home country.

Her Instagram page is now filled with artworks that show clothes, books, and other objects embroidered with red thread, which is dangling from the edges in complex knotted systems. Like all of her art before it, Day’s red thread creations are inspired by nature and the human body.

“Red thread symbolizes human connection in Japan. My fascination with the similarity between nature and the human body manifested in matrixes that resemble blood vessels, root systems, and tree vines,” Day told Colossal.

Day’s red thread art is meant to evoke the Japanese good luck charms called sennibari aka “thousand person stitches”. These collectively made works were often stitched into clothes and given to soldiers for protection before they go away to war.