Floral Repeat Prints
Ideation
I began developing ideas by sketching a variety of rare Minnesotan flowers and experimenting with how they could be put together to create different patterns. The goals was to explore how much each pattern could differ from the next, using a family of similar elements and motifs.
Color
I wanted to use a slightly unorthodox color scheme for flowers in order to pull the mind away from what it would expect, allowing the forms and layouts themselves to draw more attention. This would be aided by producing multiple colorways of patterns. With an end goal of producing patterns for use on clothing, I chose this cut of fabric from an old duvet and used its colors as the basis for the scheme, adding in pinks with matching values so that colors could easily be substituted for one another.
Initial Patterns
These were the first patterns pieced together from the chosen elements. They partially achieved my goal of exploring diverse ways of using similar motifs (geometrically in this case), but felt too similar to one another, and neither stood out as a possible primary print. The pattern on the right was deemed too akin to that of wrapping paper, so it was scrapped. The colors were also a poor match to the chosen fabric and the pink was unpleasing, so those were all reworked.
Revised Patterns
These are the final versions of the patterns. The left was to created to be a busy, strong centerpiece (primary pattern) for the collection, one that would clearly communicate the subject matter and stand out in comparison to the others. The secondary pattern (on the right) was included to maintain the aforementioned diversity of ideas within the series, contrasting with the primary and being used to create a different, more rigid feeling than it in the same physical context. The simple coordinate (center) was adjusted to be more dense to keep up with the busyness of the other two and its elements were adjusted to lie on a two directional grid in order to visually contrast better with the three directional (hexagonal) grid of the secondary pattern.
Hand Printing
Individual squares were cut from the duvet and matched with different ink colors to experiment with a variety of possible alternative colorways for the print series. I learned that, for such thin fabric, it's crucial to not overstretch in order to avoid being unable to line everything up on subsequent layers. This resulted in a number of prints having wildly misaligned second layers. Eventually, I worked out a safe middle ground to maintain both accuracy and avoid shifting. For designs with hard edges, like these, I determined that it was better to err on the side of too many layers than too few. Too few would result in an unfavorable, aged, weak look while excessive layers actually resulted in a nice three-dimensionality and tactile feel, which could be beneficial in certain applications.
Print Collection
The resulting collection transfers successfully to physical print, and includes patterns that function in a variety of colorways (the secondary, especially). The primary and secondary lend themselves well to a variety of applications, as seen in these clothing/fashion examples, with the simple coordinate playing a unifying role and adding a pop of interest.
