Textiles can evoke an emotional response that is induced by the smell, texture, memory, and embodied experiences that are released through wearing, touching, and talking about textiles. The textile artifact is our most universal designed object, with the capacity for us to experience it simultaneously with all our senses and emotions. The personal textile archive is a term created for this study to describe textiles that have been taken out of practical use, and have been informally, yet purposefully, gathered together. Textile artifacts within the personal textile archive function as both a treasury of personal, social, and family memories, and as a treasury of design details. A series of interviews were conducted in which participants were asked to discuss their own personal textile archives, in order to uncover the embodied experience that arises through interactions with these sentimental textiles. This rich experience of textiles was explored through the use of qualitative research methods developed from a phenomenological research methodology, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Through a case study in which a couple of English and Punjabi heritage describe their wedding outfits, interviews set and analyzed within a phenomenological paradigm demonstrate this method's facility to explore the interplay between design and experience
