Crafting Textiles : Unveiling the Artistry Behind the Textile Design P

Crafting Textiles : Unveiling the Artistry Behind the Textile Design Process

August 7, 2023

Nerida Hansen August 7, 2023

I would like to you behind the scenes of Nerida Hansen Fabrics and give you a glimpse into how I go about my design process. The launch of my "Kiewa" collection is a labor of love, so I have used this collection to explain how I bring my creative visions to life.

The journey from my first ideas to the finished product involves a number of steps including:

INSPIRATION
DESIGNING THE ARTWORK AND GRAPHICS
PUTTING THE GRAPHICS INTO A TEXTILE REPEAT
SELECTING COLOUR PALETTES
CHOOSING APPROPRIATE SUBSTRATES FOR EACH DESIGN
ORDERING SAMPLING
RECEIVING SAMPLING, DOING FINAL SELECTIONS AND ORDERING PRODUCTION
CREATING SOME GARMENTS OR SENDING TO SEWERS WE LOVE TO HELP CREATE THE MARKETING CONTENT
LAUNCH

INSPIRATION

My Inspiration always comes from a number of sources, and the Kiewa Collection was inspired by a strange mix!

Firstly I was lucky enough to go to New York in May, and I was loving all the twin sets in simple retro geo prints, hence my "Chainlink" fabrics for this collection. I don't often lean into browns, but I took a chance this time with cinnamon and a crisp dark brown because I saw a lot of simple brown, grey and green in New York and thought it offered something new.

I am also inspired by the brights that have appeared in all my trend research over the past months, so with butter and yellows, analogous pinks and the new greens "Kiewa" is an exceptionally fun colour palette.

At the time of creating this collection, my family and I had also decided to take 6 months away to live in our little log house in Victoria's high country. It sits in the Kiewa Valley, which inspired my very graphic botanical print "Kiewa". It is a lot bolder than I had planned but very fresh and fun. As usual I played with other prints in my library and ended up with the shapes from Kiewa laid over my Trellis Print. Thankfully anything goes in my world!

Image of colourful Pantone Swatches and new Patterns by Nerida Hansen

DESIGNING ARTWORKS AND PUTTING THEM INTO A TEXTILE REPEAT

I am somewhat of an "emerging" textile artist, having had in-house designers in my business in it's first 5 years. I am definitely working on new skills but I am not yet getting time to draw or paint original art that I long to put on textiles. As a result, most of my work is grabbing elements that exist in my library and creating simple shapes on illustrator. This kind of process really suited the graphic result I was after.

I work the designs into a textile repeat which requires you to design a "tile" that will repeat seamlessly on all 4 sides. I do all this work digitally on Adobe Illustrator, sometimes using Photoshop. Because I like designs to be "oversized" I always start with quite a large art board and create the pattern within a square or rectangle boundary that will represent the size of a single repeating section.

To make it seamless I match up the elements first on corners, then on edges. I copy those elements and paste them precisely on the opposite side of the bounding box. Commands within Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop make it easy to paste the elements precisely so the pattern will flow continuously on the fabric printer.

I ALWAYS get carried away for hours in this process and after playing around with scale and options I normally develop many more prints than I finally run with.

SELECTING COLOUR PALETTES

For this collection I really wanted to inspire my customers to create an individual look across any of my sewing patterns by mashing up different fabric designs. I made sure that all the colours, even brights and pastels work in in harmony, even when prints are disjointed. I just LOVE the outcome of using these prints together. The images below is actually 4 different designs:

New Directions Pastel on Sleeves
Shaded in Red/Pink on Front
Tangled Butter on the Back
Tangled Shapes in Black for binding.

We hacked the Soiree and used binding, as well as cropping the length and changing the neckline, using the binding as ties. With the pastels and brights both working well together on this top I think I achieved the colour harmony I was after.

Analogous colour combinations are currently my favourite. These are colours that are very close on the colour wheel. Rather than warm and cool as contrast I love putting warm and warm or cool and cool, which is what you find with the "Shaded" prints in the Kiewa Range.

As you can imaging, throughout this process my desk was awash with colour!

SELECTING SUBSTRATES

One thing I learnt very early on in my fabric business was that the design is only as good as the base cloth you print it on. Making selections about which fabrics to print on is incredibly important, as the design can be it's best on a textured linen and utterly lack lustre on a flat weave.

SAMPLING AND PRODUCTION

Sampling happens within just a week or two of finalising designs, and my suppliers are incredibly supportive in this process to ensure I am getting exactly what I was expecting. Occasionally colours are too saturated or dull, or the scale that I have designed comes in too large or too small. Any changes are made at this point, and I usually proceed straight to production after receiving samples.

MARKETING

As a designer, my inspiration in the very beginning often comes from a vision I have in my mind about how I want a top, skirt or pair of pants to look. Whilst I am usually really confident of the result, nothing speaks for the design until we have made it into a garment, so we always sew up various items and take some fun photos for marketing.

My favourite images always come when we send fabrics to our gorgeous customers who add their own artistic flair to come up with marketing content. I just LOVE seeing how others create, sew and wear my fabrics. With Kiewa we asked a number of beautiful sewers to help us out. The images below are from Oopa Melbourne @oopamelb and our gorgeous friend (and sometimes colleague) Paula @popscansew

Lovely Check Pants and Oopa Melbourne Accessories

LAUNCH

And finally, my designs are ready to be shared with the world!

We post our images, make our fabrics available online and invite you to purchase. Then we sit back and watch you all create.

To this day, I have designed and curated literally HUNDREDS of designs and I still pinch myself when I see sewers creating and wearing the fabrics.

I really love doing what I do, and I am forever grateful to all the wonderful sewers who support this process. Thank you for joining me on this journey!

Nerida xxx