Dream Weavers

It's been a while since we've posted process but an embroidery project we completed earlier in the year has gone live so I thought now would be a great time to go through a project from sketch to final embroidery. The project was for SHOP magazine and their Madrid and Barcelona shopping guide, which came to us through UK based studio Design by St and our UK illustration agency Handsome Frank. The brief was to create a patterned graphic inspired by the contemporary rug designers based in Madrid and Barcelona that are featured in the issue.

It was a wonderful project that allowed us to play with patterns but was also a little tricky. We knew we had to somehow work the title Dream Weavers into the pattern but we weren't sure how obscure the text could be. The first briefing mentioned perhaps hiding the title within the pattern which we tried to push in some of our earlier concepts but had to bring that back a bit for legibility. In the final design we opted for a traditional sans serif font but used contrasting colours in the stripe design to suggest the type being woven back into the pattern.

You can see two of our first round ideas in the top image, a very rough preliminary sketch next to the final design chosen and lastly the final embroidery. With this project most of the design was worked up in Illustrator with just that rough sketch as guidance for some pattern structures and you might notice a minor difference between the final digital version of the design and the embroidery. We had to undo one panel to help with the legibility of the subline. It was a minor change so no biggie but still makes you wish there was a control Z embroidery equivalent handy!

So that was that project, I hope seeing some of our process is helpful, I know I personally find it fascinating to glimpse into other illustrators/designers/artists/makers process. If you follow us on instagram (maricormaricar) we post up some process/wips/inspiration, much more regularly than we update this blog (sorry it's not as often as we'd like). And i'm also very please to share that Maricor and I are taking part in Studio Pop Ups which is being presented by the Powerhouse Museum as part of Sydney Design 2013. We're not used to holding market type stalls but we'll have a mini version of our studio space set up with some originals and prints on display and for sale. We also have a few bits and bobs we're making for the pop up - some pin cushions made with fabric remnants from our Maps series of patchworks as well as some tote bags we're embellishing with hand embroidery.

There will be pop ups hosted by a nice mix of designers such as Emily Green and Limedrop. More information is up on the Pop Ups page here and it will run from the 15th - 18th August 10am-5pm. We'll have some current projects that we'll work on during the pop up so if you're interested in learning more please pop down for a chat!

MAPS opening

Pheew I'm very pleased to say that our MAPS show is now up at Koskela. True to form there was some last minute up all night nimble needle work to get the last piece finished but it was all worth it. The opening was last weekend but the exhibition runs until August so there's still plenty of time to see it if you're Sydney based. Unfortunately I was in a rush and arrived late to the opening, so was a little frazzled and didn't take any photos on the day. But we did take some photos during the install and will try to get some pics of the show before we take it down. Many thanks to Kate at Koskela and M for all their help measuring out positions, hammering and ladder climbing. Below are the main patchworked wall hangings and the one we've nicknamed the long sock.

There is also a little extra side show in the nook with some of the pieces we created for Pick Me Up earlier in the year. You can see some of the Epic Battles and our Aim to Misbehave piece.

We also had some great write ups on the show on Inside Out magazine's blog, Desktop and Broadsheet Sydney.
PS You can see some more of our workspace ie my lounge room in the Broadsheet Sydney feature.