digital textile design for Mrs Lovett

[labricoleuse]

In Bill Brewer's designs for Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, her second look has a very specific stripe to it. He'd found a swatch of fabric at a New York vendor which he loved, but there were two problems: the vendor sold out of the fabric before the swatches were approved, and in order to match the fabric up the center front in this inverse chevron, one half of the skirt would have had to be cut inverted, which creates a visual anomaly in textiles with satin weaves.

Concept slide and design rendering by Bill Brewer


Image of silk yardage - the fabric we couldn't buy

In order to achieve this look, my assistant and first-year grad student Erin Torkelson took the above research image of the fabric Bill liked, rendered the stripe as a TIFF, and uploaded it to Spoonflower. We ordered sample swatches of it in a couple different substrate fabrics and Bill chose the fabric he liked best (the poly satin). He also elected to change the stripe to feature more whitespace. Then, because the stripe design is not a balanced mirror of itself, we had two versions of the stripe printed so that the skirt could be cut with that matching chevron up the front with the directional nap accommodated for.

Lovett Stripe
Lovett Stripe Reversed

Pretty cool, eh?

Comments

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

I always enjoy your process posts.