Before I took time off to have Jannis and get used to our new life together, I knew it was high time to change my textile studio and the way I work. Since starting the studio, I have produced hand printed and dyed textiles in Tassie (or wherever else I was living) and also worked with PrintInk Studio in Melbourne to screen print a few yardage prints. Working solo and printing and dyeing everything by hand, on top of the general management of a small creative business and attending Salamanca Market every Saturday, was busy and became physically impossible towards the end of pregnancy. Although I have a love for the hand made and one of a kind textiles that I was making, it meant there was no time whatsoever for my main love - designing and drawing.
When I was 38 weeks pregnant and going a bit stir crazy from covid restrictions and not being able to make anything, this problem was looming over my head more than ever. I ended up spending a heap of time working and finalising a grant application to reframe and pivot my design process and move towards working with digital printed textiles. Unfortunately for me, I was unsuccessful in the grant round, but undertaking writing and planning, talking to people, along with a lot of dreaming about the future has led me to start working in a different direction in the past month now that I feel moved creatively again that the postpartum fog has cleared.
With funding, the textile collection I had planned to launch was quite generous, which I have had to scale this back for the time being. Now I have the view to launch 2-3 designs in a few colour ways to start this foray into digitally printing textiles. During this time I hope to also start digitising the hand printed and dyed collection to give more
Turns out, these limitations are much more motivating to me at this point than having the pressure of a big project to undertake. Exploration of new techniques, mark making and digital print technology is a big enough journey to be on for the time being, and I’m looking forward to sharing along the way, and personally, having some documentation to reflect on.
Some initial mark making using etching on plastics to translate into digital prints for textiles.