On holiday weather

Bonne année/happy new year!  You will, no doubt, recall that I have been working on a design with a talented young artist with a fantastically logical mind. She is currently studying scenography and costume design at ABK Stuttgart. I asked her casually if she’d be interested in collaborating. To my surprise and delight, she said yes. I gave her a very broad outline of things to think about when creating a repeating pattern. And asked her to bear in mind that the resulting pattern would have a life as cushions, curtains and upholstery. In someone’s home. Some time later she sent me… this extraordinary, complex, 6-sided 3D shape she’d created, totally AI-free.

Clearly, my brief was way too brief. I confess I was nonplussed. I thought it fantastic in and of itself, but what was I to do with this extraordinarily complex 6-sided 3D shape? How would I make it into a pattern that would work on a cushion, as a curtain or on a chair? Many an hour was spent just staring at it, hoping that inspiration would strike. Occasionally it does, you know. Head scratching sometimes helps. And cups of tea. With a biscuit. It reminded me vaguely of ice crystals. Should I keep it at its original size? Or make it bigger? Or maybe smaller? I wondered whether a cascade would work? Mostly I just wondered.

Having done with wondering, I set about experimenting. That’s mostly what designing is, for me anyway. Messing about trying different things until something shows promise. Some designs require a lot of messing about. Some very little. Messing about involves creating a repeat and then rendering it in the design program to see how it would look as a metre of fabric at a standard width. Over and over again, with mostly minor and sometimes major adjustments. The width of a fabric is predicated both on the size of the loom on which the base cloth is woven and on the capacity of the printer in the case of digitally printed designs like mine. My fabrics range in width from 136 to 140 cm. An added complication was that the extraordinarily complex 6-sided 3D shape did not fit readily into a repeat for a standard width of fabric because of the size and complexity of the original artwork. Argh.

I was displeased with most of my efforts. This one was the best of the bunch. I thought to get it sampled but then decided against it. Really, it did nothing for me. I put the project aside.

Time passed. We had a global pandemic. One fine day, I took the artwork out again. Many an hour was spent just staring at it, hoping that inspiration would strike. It did. I wondered whether I could both flatten it and keep its essence.

Having done with wondering, I set about experimenting. I removed and replaced, and replaced and removed elements of the shape until it was flattened but still retained a ghost of its 3D-ness. Then I created the repeat. Then I applied colour. Then the magic happened… ‘now we’re sucking diesel,’ as my ex-father-in-law would say. And all this before AI-generated imagery became a thing.

The large scale pattern has tremendous energy owing to the strong diagonal lines. A long ago holiday in Wexford springs to mind when I look at it. Wexford, you understand, is the sunniest county in Ireland. We went for a week. In the summer. To stay in a small caravan. Beside the sea. The rain poured down in torrents. The wind howled. The caravan shook and creaked. For the entire stay. Certainly it was a holiday to remember… hence the naming of this design. I sent the render to A for her opinion, with a degree of apprehension. And was mightily relieved that she loved it and wholeheartedly approved of all the messing about.

More pandemic related delays. Then we moved house. Finally, almost four years later, the design was ready for sampling. It returned from the mill just before Christmas. There is, always, a moment of trepidation on wrestling open the packing and unfurling the tightly wrapped roll of fabric. Oh, what glee… for it is even better than I had imagined.

Holiday Weather is not what I expected to end with when we started. Designs take you where they will…

A bientôt