Design Process: Making of the Horse Ranch & Evil Eye Tree Prints
We pair all our designs so that each product will have one print on the front, and a different print on the back. This makes them versatile and able to be styled in different ways. Today we’re giving an insight into the design and production process of the Horse Ranch and Evil Eye Tree prints from our Kapadokya collection, whose complementary blues and greys work together beautifully!
Inspired by Travels in Cappadocia
It’s said that the name ‘Cappadocia’ is derived from a Persian word meaning ‘land of beautiful horses.’ Inspired by this, plus the fact we saw several horse ranches on our travels in Cappadocia, we decided we wanted to include an illustrated horse print in the collection.
Another element that really stood out on our travels was the Nazar Boncugu, or Evil Eye amulet. Sold in various forms in every tourist shop, we saw trees covered in them, offering protection against bad luck and misfortune. It was a striking sight and one that we thought would make a great pattern!
Design Process
When designing the Horse print we liked the idea of a fairly abstract criss cross of fences, dotted with horses. Here’s a rough initial sketch of the pattern:
The hardest part of developing the Evil Eye Tree print was working out which way the design should repeat. This is a snapshot of how it was initially drawn, but the design was later tweaked to repeat more horizontally so it would be easier to print. 
Another change was that originally it was designed with a darker blue at the centre of the eye motif. These little dots turned out to be too detailed to print as a separate layer so we merged it with the main blue layer which worked out well in the end, as when it printed on top of light blue the overlay made it darker anyway.
Sampling the Design
When the designs were complete they were separated into layers, one for each colour. These were then exposed onto mesh screens for screen printing. Here’s the first test print of our Evil Eye Tree print, lying on some screens to dry:
Hand Screen Printing the Fabric
Once we’d spent a while sampling, testing the screens and selecting colours we’re all ready to go! The fabric is laid out on thirty metre long tables. The table has a slight stickiness to it, so the fabric stays in place, flat and taut for printing. Here are some images of the printing process.
Once the fabric is printed it needs to be taken off the table and hung up to dry. That’s when special sellotape shoes come in handy to stop sticking to the table!
Stitching Products
Back in the studio our fabrics are stitched into products!
