Lucas Loves exclusive fabric
Hello there, my name is Steph Driver.
I am the owner, designer and screen printer of LucasLoves.
I create bright, fun, colourful eco-friendly products for your life
and home; I like to think all of my products bring joy into every day.
I was thrilled to be asked by Mille Moon to design a pattern for fabric, that would be printed and sold exclusively in their independent shop in Frome. Here’s how it all happened.
THE BRIEF
The brief is one of the best, in fact, the best brief any designer could wish for…
Me: Do you have a brief / idea of pattern in mind?
Becki: Free reign, we love what you do.
Oooooh yeh, that’s the best brief ever, what a joy! What it also meant was that I really had to nail down the idea, to make sure I didn’t go off on too many tangents. I mean, I will always go off on tangents (don’t we all do that?!) but I needed to use my time wisely and not drift too far away from the initial idea.
THE IDEA
I am a huge fan of mid-century style. I love most things from this era, pattern, print, design, fashion, furniture…Yeh, pretty much most things. The idea; to create a pattern that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1950’s.
THE PROCESS
It starts with research. I have ‘go to’ reference books to get ideas flowing and then I live with the ideas bubbling around in my head for days, weeks and yes, sometimes years!
At this point, I usually start to sketch. I use my sketchbook as
a clearing of my creative mind, there is a lot of ‘not very good’ work in there, but amongst all this there is always something
that I love. I tend to move onto the computer at this stage, where I scan sketches and start to play.
This sketch was definitely something that I wanted to use. I played with using only this, creating a pattern with just the lines but then it moved on and developed into becoming an overlay to the coloured shapes.
To find out more about Stephs work go to her website www.lucasloves.co.uk