Printed textiles and other prints

This is my second blog post about the work of final year students studying for a BA (Hons) in Textiles: Innovation & Design. In this blog post, I am going to show you the work of some students who specialised in printed textiles. You can also read about the work of students specialising in Woven or Multi-Media Textiles.

The Printed Textiles pathway at Loughborough University has an outstanding reputation. All final year students exhibit and sell their work at ‘Indigo’. Students specialising in printed textiles work with screen printing and digital design technology: follow this link to see the print room and this one to see the dye lab.

As a former scientist, I love dye labs! Scientific precision melded with creative flair to produce beautiful colours. Textiles students, who specialise in Print, will print on textiles and many other surfaces, for example, wallpaper.

Gemma Moore

Gemma’s final collection is called ‘Fields of Romance’; her inspiration was British flowers, together with elements of lace and paisley. She used digital and screen print techniques. The length with the pink and peach flowers caught my eye first, but I also love the papered stair risers.

Gemma had a placement with Dunelm in Leicester.

Maya Dunn

Maya’s inspiration for her collection was the concept of ‘Paradise’. She illustrated tropical wildlife and orchids seen at Kew Gardens. She used observational drawing and photography to create designs which she then produced using hand-dying, screenprint and digital technologies including laser-etching and jacquard.

Maya won The Glendonbrook Enterprise & Innovation Award, 2014 and the Ede and Ravenscroft Travelling Scholarship, 2013. Her impressive list of placements includes Liberty in London, Romo in Nottinghamshire, Timorous Beasties in Glasgow and Mirjam Rouden in London as well as Karolina York in Sydney.

Gemma Sophie Brown

Gemma’s inspiration for her ‘Victorian Treasures’ collection were Victorian pieces, places and pastimes. This collection certainly evoked naturalists and plant collectors for me. I love the way she displayed her work, using wooden boxes, lined with her prints to hold plant and butterfly specimens.

Gemma completed placements at Zoe Murphy Design in Margate, George for Asda in Lutterworth and Karen Jane Interiors in Towcester.

Robyn Dark

I also loved how Robyn displayed her prints on tree branches, and her prints certainly made me think of tree branches. Her inspiration was the similarities between human anatomy (think of blood vessels) and the arboreal structures of roots, lichen, bark and branches. I think that these are all fractals.

Robyn won a scholarship from the Bradford Society of Dyers and Colourists in 2013. She also completed placements at Draw in Light, Rella and Alexander McQueen in London as well as Fusion CPH Design Studio in Copenhagen.

Sophie Painter

Sophie’s inspiration for her designs was the ‘A Plant Hunter’s Paradise’ exhibition at Kew Gardens. She combined tropical and jungle images with geometric pattern to create a bold collection that was eye catching in all the right ways. Doesn’t the print look good lining the trunk!

Sophie won first prize in The Bradford Textile Society Competition in 2014. She also completed a placement at Lambart and Brown in London.

Twenty-five final year students specialised in print. Looking at this small selection, I can see a theme in the ones I’ve chosen; they were all inspired by plants. Even though the inspiration is essentially the same, the final collections are very different! If these have inspired you, there are photos of work by all the print students (and not just florals) on the Flair website. Or you can read my blog posts about weave and multi-media textiles.