Silkscreen & Scribble the inner workings of a hand printed textile studio

No silly, I’m not talking actual ladies dancing but instead lovely fuchsia flowers with their long leggy stamens and flouncy petticoat petals. Some designs just seem to spring out of my head fully formed and getting them onto paper/computer is super easy, but sometimes (like this) they need gently coaxed out and manipulated to get the right shape, composition etc.

I’m excited to finally get this exposed onto a screen since it’s taken a lot of tweaking to get to this stage. Now comes the fun part of choosing what colour to print!

For added realism I photographed the plain back of one of my cushions so that I can use it to mock up designs on Photoshop to see them on the cushion and decide on colours. I’m liking the teal but also fuchsia pink (very appropriate), violet, red, spring green, burnt orange… I could go on. So it’s time to go and make some decisions and print up some samples, make the cushions, photograph etc and then eventually get them into the shop.

Posted: March 10th, 2010 in design, hand-printing.
Comments: 1

As a small business it’s always interesting to be able to do special commissions for customers. I had been thinking about trying out printing a couple of my designs in red ink on natural linen but I hadn’t got round to printing up some samples yet. Then one of my neighbours came to visit the studio with her sister who was in Orkney on holiday and she asked me to print a couple of cushions for her home.

I’m really pleased with the way this design looks in red and I think I may have to print some more of these for the shop sometime soon. The other cushion is in my pebbles design - I like it in red too but not quite as much I can’t decide whether to make more or not?

What do think red pebbles or no red pebbles?

Posted: September 20th, 2008 in design, hand-printing, inside the studio.
Comments: 7

I did an interesting commission last year for the Pier Arts Centre, which is a local gallery. It’s an amazing place to have on your doorstep and they have an impressive collection of work from artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicolson.

The centre is really part of the community and have a great program of educational events and involvement with local schools and they asked me to produce some floor cushions for kids to use as they take part in various activities around the galleries such as drawing and storytelling sessions.

Although it was the end of last year that I made them I’ve only recently received these photos and it’s great to see them in action.

Posted: September 6th, 2008 in art, design, hand-printing, inside the studio.
Comments: 2