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Origami & Henry...
Origami & Henry...
Published:
Apr 26 2019 - 05:00
From Janet Clare...
‘Flowers open and heaven reveals it’s essence’- selvedge quote
Our youngest son Henry had a fleeting obsession with origami, patiently teaching himself how to fold paper fortune-tellers, rabbits, cranes, flowers and boxes.
Whilst our house was gradually filling up with pretty papers and folded creatures I visited the Japanese galleries at the British Museum and had an inspiring and happy morning studying exquisite prints, calligraphy, kimono and ceramics taking notes and drawing in my sketchbook as I went along.
The idea for an origami fabric collection came to me on the train home - as good ideas often do -and once back in my studio I started collecting images on my Pinterest board.
I decided to draw and create all the imagery for the fabric collection by painting with bleach on an indigo ink surface. This is so much fun to do and gives you fluid, interesting lines and textures.
After a few days simply playing and experimenting you have to start refining your many ideas into a cohesive collection with the balanced variety of scale, texture and colour patchwork requires.
I like to create blender prints, for ‘Origami’ these were inspired by folds and pleats.
And of course, pretty dots which blend and compliment everything!
Other designs are perfect for telling the story of the collection...
There are also some fun larger scale prints which are perfect for backing fabrics and larger pieced blocks.
Drawing the step-by-step illustrations for how to fold an origami crane was quite a challenge I can tell you!
These sketches became this fabric.
I designed a new quilt called ‘Emi’ for the Origimi fabric collection.
It was inspired by fanned sheets of pretty origami papers. The blocks are simple enough for everyone to piece but the quilts’ careful attention to fabric placement makes ‘Emi’ enough of a challenge to be interesting for the more experienced quilter too.
After Emi was finished, she wanted a "glamour shot". Or perhaps it was Betty that wanted one.
One last note, as ever Origami plays nicely with all my other fabric collections!
I hope you like Origami as much as I do.
Cherrio!
Janet
All images used with permission of Janet Clare – All Rights Reserved.
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