Interview : Ink & Spindle

I’m excited to share with you my first interview. I discovered Ink & Spindle ,a screen-printing studio,few months ago while wandering in the blog of Lara Cameron, Kirin note, one of the three co-owners of this new company, which just turned 1 year. Ink and Spindle is run by 3 designers from Melbourne (Australia) Lara Cameron, Bianca van Meeuwen and Tegan Rose. The patterns of their fabrics are delightful & whimsical. In two word Just Fab.

What does a textile designer actually do?
Here at Ink & Spindle we only spend a small fraction of our time designing, which mostly involves drawing and then finishing in Illustrator or sometimes draw directly in Illustrator. The exciting part of being a textile designer at Ink & Spindle is actually getting to print the design as well and see it ‘come to life’.

What is your background?
We all come from a somewhat unconventional background. Tegan studied fine arts and then teaching, Lara comes from a multimedia and webdesign background and I studied International Business & Management.

How long have you been in the textile industry and how did you start?
Ink and Spindle was born about a year ago and that’s when we all really started to focus on the textile industry. Before Ink & Spindle Lara & Bianca designed patterns and outsourced the printing for about 3 years.

How would you define your style?
Lara’s style could be defined as cute and whimsical, Tegan’s style is more classic and my style is often described as ‘European’.

What’s are your influence?
Our main influence is Melbourne and Australia, but that said, inspiration comes from all different sources.

How do you get inspire? How do you feed your creativity?
Creativity is not something you can switch on or off, it’s an ongoing process. We try to step away from the business every so often to get inspired by our city and surrounds.

Have you been stuck creatively? What’s your remedy to get past it?
We’ve all been stuck creatively and the best thing for us is to actually step away from the business and seek inspiration by going on a trip or a stroll through the city. We are also inspired by the art and designs around us.

How do you work? (the process)
Our designs usually start on paper and are then scanned into Illustrator where we design in a repeat pattern format. Once the Illustrator file is completed we get it printed on a big piece of film, which in turn gets exposed onto a screen. Once the screen is ready, we print the pattern repeat on fabric.

Mac or pc? Software used:
Lara & Tegan use a pc, Bianca uses a mac. We all use Adobe Creative suite.

Favourite material to draw:
Moleskine & artline or straight into Illustrator.

Your favourite place to work:
The Ink & Spindle Studio or a local cafe.

What are your current projects?
We have lots of projects on the go, mainly pattern design, printing and preparing for next year’s craft shows.

Your favourite artists:
Lotta Jansdotter, Catherine Campbell, Wendy June, Publisher Textiles, Cloth and many more.

What can you say about Ink and Spindle?
Ink & Spindle is a boutique screen-printing studio. We specialise in high quality textile printing for designers and independent labels.

And finally, If you had one tip to give for those who want to work in this industry, what would it be?
Our best advice to give is to ‘do it’! Be proactive and promote yourself or start your own business.

Please not only visit the Ink & Spindle site but also Bianca’s blog and Lara’s blog

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