Design Process: Making of the Big Cat Camo Print

Next in our series with a behind the scenes look at the design process for our Tiger Safari collection prints, it’s the Big Cat Camo print!

Inspired by Camouflage and Animal Print

The Big Cat Camo print is a twist on classic camouflage and animal prints. The concept for the print came from the fact that ‘Big Cats’ like leopards and tigers are really hard to spot in the jungle. It’s almost like they’re camouflaged! Safari guides wear camo too, so we thought of creating a new kind of camo pattern with the camouflage shapes filled with tiger stripes and leopard spots.

Designing the Pattern

This animation shows some stages of the development of the textile print. Sarah started by drawing out a camouflage pattern. Then she tried different ways of mixing the leopard spots and tiger stripes in with the camo, along with ideas for different colourways.

Sampling the Design

This was the hardest part. Whilst the design took a very long time to draw, it also took ages to get the right combination of colours. We decided we wanted to do two colourways. ‘Foliage Green’ to represent all the greenery (where tigers hide) in the forest and ‘Fierce Orange’ to represent the tigers! The challenge was to get the balance of cool and warm shades of green, and to mix different oranges and reds together so that the camo motifs stood out but none of the colours were too overpowering. The design has 4 colours, so we picked 4 Pantone colours for each colourway and did several rounds of test prints, tweaking the colours each time until we were happy with them.

Printing the fabric

When we start printing the tables are set up with fabric and metal stops are placed for the screens to align and the pattern to repeat correctly. Our wonderful printers then work up and down the table, printing colour one at a time.

Stitching Big Cat Camo Products

Once the fabric is printed we bring it back to our studio in Chirag Delhi. Our team of tailors stitch it into all our different products.

Big Cat Camo Quilt

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