Designing a scarf

So how do we go about designing a silk scarf?



Victoria working on designs



Well in the first instance we discuss with our customer what sort of scarf they have in mind – do they want a traditional silk square, a large square, perhaps a long scarf, or a small neckerchief? What sort of fabric have they got in mind? Light and floaty like georgette or chiffon, soft and luxurious like crepe-de-chine or satin, or rich and opulent like velvet?

Once we’ve decided on the format we begin to look at the source material. This is often in the form of digital photographs of objects or perhaps artefacts or paintings from a museum collection.

In the case of the velvet scarf that we produced for The Art Fund, the source material was a beautiful piece of furniture inlaid with semi precious stones, a technique known as pietra dura. From the photograph we enlarged the details and then hand drew the individual elements. We then scanned these drawings and tracings into Photoshop and manipulated them to create the finished design.



Design board for The Art Fund velvet scarf



The reason we do this is because the marks that a human being makes are often irregular and the brain picks this up. By using hand drawings from the start we retain this human element through to the finished design.

Hand drawing of designs

The Art Fund velvet scarf



Close up of The Art Fund velvet scarf



The scarf and tie design for Morgan Motor Company was a challenge. All they could send us were photographs of cars, bits of cars – and of course their logo! For this one we played around with filters in Photoshop to reduce the images to line drawings before producing hand drawings that we used for the final design.

Design board for Morgan Centenary scarf and tie

And here is the finished design, a simple two screen print on satin for the scarf, and silk twill for the tie.



Morgan Motor Co. silk scarf and tie