general, panels - 05 March 2017

Behind the Seams: Dandelion Collection

A few months ago I mentioned to Steph from Owl & I that I would love to work with her on an Easter/not Easter collection. I wanted cutesy but not too baby and sent her a few inspiration pics of the kind of thing I was wanting. This is what she sent me.

I wasn't convinced I liked the layout and told Steph so... as I do (she has tough skin thankfully)!

We chatted a bit more and thought maybe a standing bunny blowing on the dandelion and making a wish might work better and a couple of versions later, we landed here.

There was much discussion around co-ordinating fabrics and doing something that had the right scale to work for both girls and ladies wear and which animal would work the best to be feeding off the dandelion. The main co-ordinating print needed to be non-directional to be the most fabric efficient if people wanted to use it for ladies clothing.

I sent Steph this sort of idea like kisses and hugs with bee's or whatever animal we decided on flying around.

That evolved to become dandelions and hummingbirds instead which was a whole lot better than I could have imagined!

It was important to figure out colours before we proceeded to help refine what the other animal should be.

I wanted to do a different colour ground to what I had done previously and something that would have an Easter feel and be suitable for all ages. This colour palette was the inspiration for what I was wanting. The background to be grey with highlights of the pink and teal shades. This is also when we decided that a butterfly would probably work best to tie everything together and be the most age appropriate choice for both age groups we were trying to capture.

I noticed the Sorbet toilet paper had dandelions, so we figured we must be so on trend it wasn't funny!! HA HA!!

This was the first 'coloured' draft.

Her mouth looked a little 'cats bum' and the butterflies were a bit small and lost, so we fixed those. We also then colour matched the green and pink shades to my existing fabrics.

I mucked around with placing the panels onto patterns to get a feel for how it would look made up.

I thought a print for the backs of rashies, dresses, etc. with just a scattered butterfly would be nice.

I wasn't really liking the bunny being off centre, so we reworked the placement of the butterflies to centre her.

The only change I wanted after this was to make the cheek softer.

The co-ordinates happened pretty quickly after we locked the panel in.

Because of the amount of 'solid' colour, we introduced a mini dot during the printing process which makes it a bit more interesting and breaks up the solid.

I did another quick check of how it all worked to scale in some garments.

Then we went off to sampling!

Majority of the time because I try and match things up to my existing BOO! colours, I am happy with sampling the first time around... and this was no exception! Love it!!

Then it is over to my Inspiration Team who work their magic sewing up garments to give an idea of scale and showcase different co-ordinating fabrics. They never fail to disappoint even when working to ridiculously tight deadlines!