When Fiona from Rooted recently got in touch about her plans to open a House Plants shop in Aberdeen and could she stock some of my scarves, I jumped at the chance to design an EXCLUSIVE leafy green scarf especially for her. It was a really tight deadline, she had only confirmed the lease on the shop in January, and was set to open the first week of March, so this didn’t leave much time for drawing, designing, printing and hand finishing this special scarf, but fortunately once I started working on it inspiration flowed and ideas formed quickly in my mind – it must be true, Green is the colour of creativity and the design all came together through the power of plants to inspire!
Like all my designs, this scarf started with hand drawn imagery, which I drew from Rooted Scotland’s photos on her instagram account – it was a lot of fun trawling her imagery picking out different plants to draw and even learnt a few tips for house plant care while I was at it! I decided to spend some time on sketchbook work, which I have been neglectful of lately as I’m usually keen to get on to the digital stage, but lately I’ve been feeling inspired to work in paper collage – mainly since teaching the Printed Textiles Short Course at Gray’s School of Art and feeling jealous of all their beautiful sketchbooks. I took my drawings and shrunk them down on the photocopier, cut them out and then used these to create paper collage, adding colour with felt tips and markers.
As my scarves are all digitally printed, working in photoshop is essential and so then it was a case of converting my drawings to digital files so they can be worked on. I love using photoshop, but sometimes the endless options are a bit overwhelming so it does help to have some paper based artwork to refer to so as to keep you on track. I’ve never wanted my designs to look too digital, I want to keep that hand drawn element so sometimes I’ll leave in little errors or mistakes to keep that feeling of hand work.
Once I’m happy with my design it then gets sent to be printed, I chose a silk crepe de chine for this scarf as it has a lovely drape and feels amazing, almost suede like, and the colours are always beautiful and sharp. The prints are then returned to me in my studio to be hand finished, labelled, packed up and finally delivered to the shop.
Then was LAUNCH NIGHT! Fiona has created the most beautiful botanical emporium in Aberdeen. Every houseplant you could dream of creating a little urban jungle oasis for us to explore. And not just plants on sale but she is also stocking art work, cards and gifts from local designers and makers.
So I should probably now show you the final design? Here it is, the Rooted scarf exclusively designed for Rooted in Scotland. Available in two sizes 90x90cm and 45x45cm. As it’s only available from Rooted, if you aren’t local to Aberdeen please get in touch if you are interested and I’m sure we’ll be able to arrange a mail order sale.
Thanks for reading the story of how this bespoke scarf was designed and made. If you are interested in having your own scarf designed by me please get in touch, I’d love to hear your ideas. Also you can check out the bespoke section on my site to see other projects I’ve worked on including some wedding designs and The Time Traveller scarf I did for Glenfiddich Whisky
