Canadian based-indie sewing company, Blackbird Fabrics, offers a curated collection of modern and wearable textiles, as well as their own budding line of garment labels.
I had the absolute joy of collaborating with Blackbird on this Self Care collection of sew-in garment labels.
Packaging design by Studio Studio
The indie sewing community celebrates individuality and the uniqueness of each sewing project, as well as slow fashion being, well, slow! While Blackbird gave me lots of free rein to explore my own style, I wanted to embody those qualities of the community in this collection.
Such small design space meant limited detail available in manufacturing, so illustrations needed minimal detail and have little to no stroke.
More colors means more costs. Using a limited palette for each illustration was needed to keep costs low.
I’d noticed that, at the time, many sew-in garment labels that were popular on the market often featured exclusively text, or were featured specific sewing lingo/terminology. I’d seen that some more illustration-focused and less sewing-specific ones started to show up in the market and decided that this was the direction I wanted to go.
I could lean into my personal style while still intertwining ideas of self-expression and taking it easy, in a lighthearted visual style.
Images from sewing accessories company Kylie and the Machine
This project was hugely rewarding in just seeing the hundreds of unique projects that sewists utilized these garment labels with to finish their handmade clothing and accessories.
Being a creative who gets to then take part in other creatives’ projects in this way is an incredible aspect of this collection.
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