CREATIVE PROCESSES: KARA SANDERS
Kara Sanders is a Scottish textiles designer mixing the beauty of nostalgia into her acid-dyed fabrics.
Her vivid, hand-printed designs are like nothing we have seen before, so we sat down for a wee chat through how she works, her inspiration, and the behind-the-scenes of a few of her projects.
Kara’s design process began from a fine art background, from a young age being focused on painting as a creative medium, as opposed to textiles. This changed when starting the General Foundation course at DJCAD, which gives students a taster of different methods of expression within the creative industries. “When I started applying my ideas to real briefs, I found that the fine art approach no longer worked for me - but applying the same ideas from a design perspective helped everything to fit together. I got a taste of the textiles process and I really enjoyed it. It felt much more natural for me to answer briefs that way, so that’s when I switched my main creative medium to textile design.”
So how does Kara start her design process? “I like to do a lot of research to set myself up before working on actual designs, so for me, that means looking at a load of different artists and designers. After that, I’ll move onto primary photography, going out into the world and taking my own photos that I can then base the designs off of. From there I will design with the pattern and fabric in mind first, and whatever it gets turned into is a lot further down the line when I am producing actual samples.”
Above: an insight into Kara's primary research“Primary photography is an important part of my process, because it means that all the way from the research stages, the ideas are coming from my own work instead of taking inspiration directly from a secondary source. The biggest reason I love it, though, is the detail. The amount you can capture in one photo is crazy. You could have a whole collection that you can extrapolate from a tiny section of one photo that you keep developing through design.”
Then comes the part we were most excited about - Kara’s fabric printing process. “I’m technically trained in hand printing so I create all of my patterns that way, and I specialize in using acid dyes on silk fabrics. It’s all manually screen printed on super specific fabric which is made from protein fibres, as they react best with the acid dyes that I use. You get the fabric, it’s white, you mix up your dyes from powders and chemicals, and then go from there.”
Above: behind-the-scenes of Kara's hand-printing processOne of the main reasons that Kara uses acid dyes is because they hold their colour, creating the bold, vibrant hues seen in her designs. “The type of dyes I use are acid dyes which, as the name suggests, are very slightly acidic. These result in a finished product with much more vibrant colours than if I used reactive dyes, since reactive dyes leave you with a more muted colour after washing the dye out. I could mix the exact same colour in acid and reactive, and the pigment would turn out so much brighter because you don’t lose any of that colour through bleeding.”
Above: Kara's stunning acid-dyed fabrics“I’ve definitely considered using reactive dyes on cottons within my work, as it’s a bit more sustainable and the materials are less expensive. It would help me make more garments that I could sell - I made a collection of shirts from my degree show fabric, but since so much silk and a lot of my time went into them, they’d be really expensive if I were to sell them. I just need to figure out a way to maintain those super bright colours. I’ve tried bleaching out bits with discharge printing in the past, and I found the marks from that process really interesting, so that could be something I explore further.”
Above: Kara's handmade silk shirtsOur favourite collection from Kara was made for her degree show last year, taking inspiration from personal nostalgia. “Nostalgia is a bit of a running theme throughout all of my projects - it’s something that I’ve always found really interesting. I focus on a lot of personal feelings, but I also really like how subjective the themes can be. Nostalgia is something that’s different for everyone, and everyone has their own experience with what triggers that kind of feeling in them.”
“The final concept for my degree show collection was looking at memories and loss. I based a lot of the inspiration off memories of my late mother. There’s an image that sticks in my mind of light shining through our conservatory, where she used to smoke. Orange streetlights in the winter, walking on autumn leaves - all of these images evoke that feeling of nostalgia and provide a really interesting base of inspiration that mixes my personal experiences into my work.”
Above: Kara's degree show displayThis idea of nostalgia can also be applied to more commercial projects, as Kara chats to us about working on a brief in collaboration with Halley Stevensons. “They’re based in Dundee and specialize in waxed cotton fabric, which is mainly used for outerwear, something completely new to me. The project was based on heritage, which is a kind of nostalgia in itself, relating back to the history of a place over the years - I based a lot of my work on Anstruther in that project and took loads of photos over there. I was really happy with how it all came out, especially working with a completely different material than I usually would.”
Since we had been chatting away about Kara’s past projects, it only seemed right to ask what her dream client would be. “I’d love to work with Charlotte Knowles, any kind of collaboration with her brand KNWLS. Honestly I love everything they make. It’s bold print, sexy, edgy and super 90s. I’m in love with it.”
What’s next for Kara? “Right now I’m working on a space that I can reliably create in, like a home studio. Then I’ll be set up to make whatever I want, whenever I want. I’d love to sell more of my work more consistently, all things going well!”
It was so lovely chatting to Kara, and we may or may not have some fun bits and pieces in the works that are definitely worth looking out for!
Here’s a few of our favourite projects from Kara for you to check out:
Written by Adam Gregory & Kara Sanders
Photography by Kara Sanders & Adam Gregory