How to Make Prints

My Grandmother and iconic fashion designer, Katja of Sweden, took the world by storm in the 1960's with her soft, unstructured printed jersey collection. I had the pleasure of interning for her at 17 years-old in her NYC design studio overlooking the Hudson River. I helped hand cut what ever they needed to make a print. Be it 4,000 black squares, 300 yellow dots or whatever shape her designs needed was my job for 6 months...and this was needless to say, before the Photoshop days.The experience seemed to have shaped the way I design today...its starts with the prints. (Photo above: Lotta Stensson campaign shoot in the Sahara Desert)

My love for prints is huge, and my inspiration is drawn from anything I see and from my travels to far away lands. Anything really can inspire a new print for me.

I design many of them by pen and hand drawings, shapes I cut, or parts from antique fabrics I find mixed with my drawings.

Other prints start as a computer design, which I then manipulate until I feel something unique and different has been achieved, and something that I have never seen before.

Color is everything to me! My silk collection is handmade - wood blocks are carved from my drawings, which I then use to hand-block print the silhouettes to achieve an artsy look.

(above: color stories and drawings)

(above: handmade silk prints)

(above: the design process evolves)

 

(above: the Lotta Stensson boutique)

Article and images courtesy of Lotta Stensson.

 

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