Introducing my Wild Rosa Collection

When I was a little girl, my favourite movie was Sleeping Beauty. I found both the story and the music (from Tchaikovsky’s ballet of the same name) completely enchanting (pun fully intended). Even as an adult, I have a soft spot for pink roses of the most common type but also pink roses we often see growing in the countryside or garden hedgerows. There’s a few types and two commonly know ones are Dog Rose and Sweet Briar Rose. These roses look very similar and behave in similar ways. More on this later.

I started working on this as a simple concept back in 2020 and I shared the development stages as I went along with my friend and accountability partner. I planned to work around the idea of the kind of wild roses that climb hedgerows and weave through them. It was that visual image that made me want to use both geometric illustration styles and to seek inspiration in both embroidery and in the kinds of prints we think of when we imagine medieval patterns. I distinctly remember talking through my intention to create a rose flower that would have a balance between looking polished and natural. The strategy would be to keep the lines very clean and graphic but to create a sense of movement in how the flowers were positioned that would resemble the way flowers look in botanical illustrations. Similarly, I had an idea of using a more muted colour palette than usual which was also inspired by vintage sketches and drawings.

I started with a weaving leaf drawing that was hand sketched alongside other later unused elements on a theme of magic and enchantment. I created quite a few colour palettes because it was a change in course from my usual approach to colour. Once I had created the first rose flower, I felt as though I had pushed through the most difficult stage. It was clear that the flower had hit the target I was aiming for. Now I just needed to replicate that mood in the other roses and elements and get starting working up repeats. Unexpectedly, this was where everything started to get really difficult.

There’s this funny stage of making art where you start to question how much further you want to go. How much more detail do you want to add or how much more shading? When is the right time to stop? Will you have gone too far and fear you will struggle to go back a step? I’m very grateful that creating this print helped me in that kind of painful way where you didn’t enjoy it at the time but benefitted from all the struggle. The more I iterated through the collection, the more ‘lost in the woods’ I became. I reworked print after print, running through more drafts than I normally would and I couldn’t begin to understand why it wasn’t coming together after such a promising start.

I normally concentrate on achieving a more complex hero print before working on supporting coordinates in a collection. In the end, I decided to step back and focus on just one thing with all my energy; a pattern containing a solo floral element with a contrastingly complex and weaving geometric layout. I had created more flowers off the back of the first flower I had designed and these flowers were positioned at differing angles and scales because I had planned to create an authentic image. To approach my new brief, I binned the other flowers and went back to the first one I had created. With this single element, I got started. It was this exercise that helped the whole thing slide into place.

I was able to keep moving through my other prints and finish the collection at last. Even so, once I was finished, I didn’t share the prints or launch them formally until now. Months went past and instead of eagerly sharing this work that I was so happy with, I held back. I wasn’t trying to and it wasn’t an act of self-discipline or restraint, like resisting another cookie. I just didn’t want to and that’s really not a familiar experience to me. When you start sharing creative work online, you’re often warned about the chemical hit that is going to fill your brain from the interaction and positivity around your post. It’s something that can become unhelpful when people begin to rely on it, become obsessive, or judge themselves unfairly as a result of it. It’s possibly this ‘chemical reaction’ that made me share my new work more quickly in the past. Similarly, I think there was always this sense of nerves when you share work and much like jumping from that perfectly safe height that you’re irrationally scared of, it’s better to just close your eyes and do it quickly. Between those two sensations, there was a rushed approach to pushing new work out into the social space but I felt no urge to do this with my new collection or with any work I’ve created since.

Earlier, I said that I would come back to the similarities in the Dog Rose and Sweet Briar Rose, or what I would collectively refer to as ‘wild roses’. They are the kind of flower that grows quickly and you’ll see them frequently in hedgerows; I remember seeing them in the hedgerows lining my primary school as a child. In some areas they would be considered as an invasive species and be restricted. Simply put, they seem quite weed like. It feels like that’s an odd things for me to be drawn to as inspiration in this collection until you hear more about their growth.

“A thorny climber, dog rose has strongly hooked, or curved prickles, to gain a purchase as it weaves in between other shrubs and uses them to support its growth. It can grow up to 3m tall when well supported.” - https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/plants/wild-flowers/dog-rose/

I love the way that this description aligns with a fairly obvious principle about human growth that we frequently choose to ignore. In society, we think of people who are climbing as independent and strong and determined. We write off the other details such as the need for people to “gain a purchase” from supporting structures or to “weave between” the challenges in life. This creates an illusion that you need to be able to stand permanently independent and erect from day one to be the kind of person with the strength to make it through your chosen journey. This is incorrect. We can all grow tall “when well supported” and we will inevitably need to ask for support as we go in order to help continue our growth.

This collection is feminine and nostalgic but modern in presentation and very much in touch with the values currently in focus for many of us at this time. There’s a sense of order and disorder in the layout that appeals to how we are trying to navigate in our lives. The colourways in the collection range from darker to lighter pastel ranges and I think the latter is in keeping with the hopeful mood we share for how this year will continue to unfold. Wild Rosa prints will be available as fabric and wallpaper from my Spoonflower shop or as a range of homeware items, tech cases and stationery from my Redbubble store, my Society6 store. You can also shop these prints here on my own website store where I sell a small collection of items that are handmade by myself or production partners. Let me know if you choose anything from my new collection and I’d love to keep seeing the amazing creations you’re making with my fabric.