Designing from Scratch - Stage 1 - Finding inspiration - personal project hand embroidered mobile phone sleeve

Evening. I'm just about to embark on a proper project from scratch to make myself a hand embroidered mobile phone sleeve. So I thought it may be interesting to blog about the design decisions I have to make starting with a blank sheet of paper right through to the final finished item.


Why am I doing this hand embroidered mobile phone sleeve?

I was rather excited to find there is an embroidery group once a month at the local library. And, because the library is an old single storey Carnegie library (thankyou Mr Andrew Carnegie for providing the UK with so many libraries) it has both an access ramp and a push button to operate the doors and is level access downstairs hurrah! Best of all it's literally on the other side of the road to my parent's house. Double hurrah! Which as my mobility scooter currently lives in their garage, means dad can come and pick me up in a car, take me to his garage and then I can tootle over the road and join in. Well, I say join in, I sit or lie on the floor and mostly listen to what everyone else is doing and say oops and ouch a lot (dropping the needle and then stabbing myself with it respectively. My fine motor skills are somewhat depleted these days!).

Anyway. In January we did Seed Stitch, and everyone else did a bag but I did a 2" square piece that is eventually going to be turned into a lavender bag. In February they did a lovely triangular pouch using various chain stitches from the Melinda Cross DMC book of embroidery, but I wasn't there because the lady came from wheelchair services to assess me and triple hurrah approve me for an electric power wheelchair (that tilts in space so I can rest and therefore go further than a few yards at a time, and more importantly NOT be sitting on lying on the floor when normal healthy people are sitting on chairs).

This month they did a chain stitch handkerchief pouch and I just did sample stitching (mostly at home), and next month they are going to do a paisley design on a cotton bag for life shopping bag.

Me, I'm going to be small scale again and make a mobile phone sleeve case. In chain stitches and using paisley pattern - so I'm sort of following the group, but going off piste a bit.

Anyway, so, I decided to design it properly and not wing it, and to use the Scan N Cut wherever possible - which is at the design stage and also initial preparation of materials stage.

STAGE 1 - Finding InspirationIt doesn't matter whether you find inspiration from primary sources, like nature or observation, or your own imagination, or secondary sources like someone else's work (though you should always credit it!) - but a key part of ending up with a well resolved pattern or series of shapes that please the eye and performs well in the context of how the final object will be used. And there are constraints arising from performance and intended use. I also had design constraints because I chose to join in with the group theme of paisley and chain stitches.

Work out your basic constraints for the design - how it will be used

I already knew I wanted to make a mobile phone case (the object), with the theme of Paisley (the decorative scheme), using a variety of chain stitches and hand embroidery (the media used to make the decorative scheme). And because it needs to be a little bit padded to protect the phone and also lined to protect the stitching at the back from snagging, I know I want to stitch on cotton fabric with a felt lining (materials used).

So the inspiration needed to fit in the space allowed (essentially 16cm square), the lack of fine motor skills means it needs to be quite bold, but because it's going to be all muddled up with other items in my handbag, the cloth and threads need to be robust and not easy to snag and also, the stitches need to be solid and not loose and snaggable.

So there would be no point using a fine silk thread and very loose stitches, it won't last. And there'd be no point choosing a really tiny complex design because my hands and eyes can't do it. And there'd be no point choosing a really big design, because it wouldn't fit on the case.

This really is a case of thinking hard and planning ahead means it's more likely to be a success!


Where to look for inspiration?


I started off looking at the same source our group leader was using -I had a look at the Melinda Cross book and the Paisley shawl. I quite like the way she has her paisley motifs scattered widely around the shawl, and I also liked the sample bag our lovely group leader had made to show the group what they would be doing next month, which had a similar layout of motifs.

However, I need to have a different scale and placement for a mobile phone sleeve that wraps around the phone on 3 sides, compared to the one sided design that a shawl or bag requires.

So. I did some searching on the net and came up with some lovely historical examples of paisley printed designs from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection (many museum collections are digitised these days and are an amazing source of ideas and inspiration).

Silk Tie Design Jacob Demoldenberg c.1930 V&A here

Iranian Pearwood printing block 19th century V&A here

Printed Cotton Steiner & Co 1913 V&A here

Cotton Muslin from Sultanpur Indian c.1880 V&A here

And also, a really lovely instagram picture by Marian Alison who appears to be hand embroidering one paisley motif a week as a challenge. I particularly like the rosebuds and leaves wreath type motif, but that's totally unsuitable for my phone case. However, maybe it can be used for something else some other time... But mostly I just like the sheer variety of different stitches and treatments for each motif.

Weekly embroidery challenge by Marian Alison here

STAGE 2: designing a pattern motif

Obviously I could have got a pencil and some paper and started drawing out paisley motifs. However, I get tired and my drawing skills are pretty rough these days, so I decided to google for 'paisley silhouette' and see what came up.

An awful lot! However, there was a pattern that could be downloaded for free and for free use, that I rather liked. From a site called Cliparts.co

Paisley Silhouette found at cliparts.co here

Obviously I looked at loads of different ones, but decided that the vast majority were unsuitable for providing a background guide for hand embroidery or were too detailed. I chose this one as it provides a clean unfussy outline for each motif and lots of space for improvisation and not too many sharp curves that I'd find it hard to stitch with a 'gracious line' and frankly, would be hard to mess up.

I rather liked this one, but I ran into a dead end via Pinterest and couldn't find the original source, so as I don't know who it belongs to, and also it's a bit detailed and I'm not sure about the one frilly edged motif in the middle of the pattern, I decided to go for the more simple outline from cliparts.co and let the addition of embroidery do the heavy lifting of intricate pattern in due course.

If I was doing say a screen print or a stencil or maybe vinyl on clothing, where the decoration is in the shape with a matt paint or similar layer, then I'd have chosen something like this below. But as the embroidery is going to be quite textured, a more simple outline will allow the embroidery not to be overwhelmed by intricate shapes.

found on google, leads to pinterest and a dead end to do with haunted dolls (what?!) here

So that's it, an hour or so's googling, and I had a basic motif to use as a basis for the design to be embroidered onto my mobile phone sleeve. Sometimes it takes weeks to decide on a pattern or set of motifs, but as I already had a 'design brief' of paisley and chain stitch in a limited 16x16cm space, it was a lot easier to make a decision than if I was doing a wall hanging or something with a great deal of space to fill.

The beauty of taking a design that someone else has already put together, is that the motifs are pretty much already placed in a way that leads the eye around the pattern in a way that my eye likes. If I started totally from scratch there'd be a LOT more work deciding where and which way up each individual motif would be placed. But do be careful and respectful of the ownership of the design by the original owner, their copyright rights and also, any policy they have as to how their designs are allowed to be used.

Next post will be Stage 2 - Using Inkscape and Canvas to manipulate and create the design for using the ScanNCut to draw onto the fabric.