Orpington Quilters
Orpington Quilters
Sarah Campbell
In November we were delighted to welcome Sarah Campbell as our speaker, who gave us a talk entitled "Pattern - From Paint to Print".
Sarah is a renowned textile designer, with a passion for colour and pattern. From early childhood she has a talent for drawing and painting, encouraged by her scientist father and actress mother. Since the age of about sixteen she has made patterns for textiles. She studied painting and graphics at the Chelsea School of art and assisted her sister Susan Collier, another talented artist and textile designer, who was working with Liberty. In 1979 the two sisters founded the independent Collier Campbell Ltd Studio to work solely for themselves, becoming masters of their own destiny. Sarah and Susan designed together on many collaborations including the US market for bed linen, creating designs that could be reproduced in large printing processes.
Upon receiving a design brief, Sarah raises a number of questions with the client regarding considerations to be made around the manufacturing aspects of production as these will have some influence on the design, such as types of fabric, target market, price levels, methods of production, etc., as well as contract terms, timings and approvals. Sarah explained how her designs all start with an idea that she first paints on paper with gouache paints and then plays around with colours and content. Once a design has been agreed with the client, Sarah then adjusts the picture to become a repeatable pattern that can be printed on fabric. Different colourways are considered and the pictures below show the steps in the paint-to-print process.
The colourway map
......and finally the printed fabric in both colourways.
Here you can see an initial painting, the palette of gouache paints and the experimenting with colours.
This picture shows the painting as a repeatable pattern.
In addition to producing designs for dress, quilting and furnishing fabrics, Sarah has also created patterns for crockery, rugs and other furnishings.
Here is a range of crockery in Sarah's distinctive design and colour approach.
Sarah has a wide client base of well known and respected companies, including Liberty, Jaeger, Habitat, Pukka Print and Free Spirit, to name but a few.
As enthusiastic quilters (and fervent buyers of fabric!) we found Sarah's talk on textile design and pattern production quite fascinating, and it was so interesting to learn about this process.