The largest reason for moving my studio to CSpace King Edward was to reach out to the public.
I had forgotten how rewarding it is to connect with others. Not to mention being a part of a bigger community, sharing knowledge and having the opportunity to build on and be a part of the greater surface pattern design community. When people visit my space and discover that I hand print yardage the common question is, “How?”. This often starts a rolling conversation from questions about pattern development through to the actual printing process.
There are many ways to develop a repeat pattern and I find inspiration everywhere. Our new fall series ‘ORI’ is inspired by my love of the Japanese resist dyeing technique, shibori. A year ago I revisited this surface pattern technique after attending an incredible natural dye workshop with Caroline Forde, which led me to think about exploring natural dyes in my own work. I left feeling inspired and spent that summer exploring natural indigo dyeing and various techniques for creating surface pattern from the book Shibori The Inventive Art of Japanease Shaped Resist Dyeing, by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, Mary Kellogg Rice and Jane Barton.
The summer came to an end and I was left with some beautiful fabric samples and endless possibilities for building repeat patterns. The rest is very simple; by scanning the fabric samples into my computer, I then was able to focus on the marks that really resonated with me and converted them to vector graphics using Adobe Illustrator. The three patterns I’m launching this fall evolved from there and were loosely inspired by traditional Shibori patterns more specifically the ‘miru’ stitched circles and ‘nui yoro’ stitched pleating.
It’s become increasingly important to me to push the way in which I create ‘marks’. Becoming reacquainted with natural dyes in this particular case was a great reminder that you are always learning and your creative process is ever shifting.
Inspiration is truly everywhere!