Design Portfolio – Abby Rindfuss

2 months ago

Post 13 - 2025 : Portfolio, Student Work

My Design Aesthetic and Design Interests

Over the course of this semester, I had the opportunity to explore my personal design style through multiple mediums. One of my main inspirations is Scandinavian interior design, particularly the combination of natural, colorful, and practical elements. My first mini project for this class was a design exploration and presentation. I learned about the history, design elements, and philosophy of Scandinavian minimalism and put together a synthesis. My post about this project is linked here.

Image credits: Tonn Kitchen

Upon beginning the upcycle project and the main project, I developed a clear sense of my own personal aesthetic, which is a combination of a variety of inspirations. I love tasteful placement of colors paired with natural elements such as wood. I also am inspired by vintage and mid-century modern designs.

Upcycle Project

For the upcycle project, I made a collection of collage cards. I was looking to combine my love of multi-media art with this upcycle project. I had a lot of paper scraps, paper bags, magazines, and various art utensils laying around my house that I wanted to put to good use! I also knew that I wanted to make something somewhat practical, more than just decor. I decided to make collage cards (be it thank you cards, happy birthday cards, valentines cards, etc) so that I can give them to friends and family and everyone can enjoy a thoughtful, homemade collage card. I was inspired by both the process and end-product in this type of work. The process can be somewhat tedious, constantly snipping, placing, and pasting materials, however I find it rather therapeutic. Then the end-product is always a unique piece that is brimming with personality.

The above excerpt is from my collage cards inspiration post. Here I discuss my design ideas, my proposed design aesthetic, materials, and plans.

My collage cards design report describes the final product of my upcycle project. I made 12 cards and I wanted each card to feel individually unique, but when viewed as a collection, there was a clear level of cohesion.

Part of what makes collages so special is that they often display tiny details that are telling of attention and care, adding a lot of meaning to the work. There are endless opportunities to explore different layering techniques, material combinations, compositions, textures, and patterns. I believe the maximalist, retro, whimsical aesthetic is characteristic of many forms of multimedia art. My opinion is that collages are more interesting when there is more going on. Plus, the combination of new and old materials adds contrast and dimension. I love the overwhelming amount of variety within the layers, colors, and textures. Thus, this is what I sought out to achieve in my final product. My vision for my collection of cards was to get inspired by the materials themselves, then decide what exactly to put on the cards, rather than the other way around. I had no formally structured plan of how I wanted each and every card to turn out. However, I wanted to make sure that there was a lot of variety between individual cards, but when they were all viewed together as a collection, there were obvious uniting factors that signify a cohesive vision. That way, each card can have a personality of its own while still contributing to the overarching aesthetic. Read the remainder of my design report to see the full design process.

Main Project

For my final project, I dove deeper into a bigger goal: a multi-functional indoor-outdoor quilt. My inspiration for this project is linked here, where I discuss my personal design aesthetic and the ways that it translates into a quilt. When thinking about how I could turn my aesthetic into a tangible project, I realized that I can define it as two fold: my aesthetic in the outdoors and my aesthetic indoors. I spend a lot of time outside and strive to spend as much time outdoors as I do indoors to achieve a very healthy balance of the two. My design style as applied to the outdoors could be defined as indie, folk, adventure core, and biophilic. As applied to indoor settings, my design style could be defined as colorful Scandinavian, eclectic, earthy, warm, with a touch of mid-century modern.

Next, I began the process of fabricating my quilt. I did a lot of research into quilt making, including the materials involved, the proper techniques to use, and ways to make it beginner-friendly. I was familiar with the rudimentary steps to sewing, but I had never quilted before and I was about to take on a big project. After my research, I purchased all the materials and got to work. My fabrication progress reports are linked here:

I also defined my top 5 constraints and my top 5 specifications for the quilt. That post is linked here.

I worked day and night, absolutely pouring hours into this project. However, I’m not upset about that because I genuinely enjoy sewing and quilting. Once I get into the rhythm, all the repetitive yet challenging stitching can be therapeutic. For me, the hardest part was the quilting stage. There were so many stitches to be made and since the quilt is so large and heavy, it felt like it was fighting against the sewing machine. There were a couple instances where I had to use the seam ripper and redo some stitches, which consumed a lot of time. My quilting lines are definitely not perfect and the fabric experienced some mild bunching and bubbling, however, as a whole, the quilting design turned out very well. Another obstacle I faced involved differences in the fabric textures I used. For example, one of the fabrics was very stretchy and another was silky/slippery, and others were cotton. This meant that when I was sewing together all the rows in the patchwork design, it was difficult to get the corners of the squares to line up perfectly. In the future, if I were making a similar quilt, I would buy a pre-made quilt cake (a stack of perfectly cut 10×10 squares of all the same fabric type) to help with the precision issues when quilting. Below are some images of the final product. Read more about how I made the quilt and how I fulfilled my aesthetic goals.