Fakeha Naeem Textile Designer

Clamp dying is perhaps as ancient a technique as indigo dying and batik work would be. Clamp essentially is a technique where you fold a piece of cloth in as many folds as you want and then tie/sandwich the cloth between clamps of your choice.These Clamps could be sticks, wooden blocks, coins etc anything really, let your imagination run wild. How you fold the fabric, which,in this case is silk scarves, deduces the final dyed pattern on the silk after dying. You can fold the scarf in to a small /large square, rectangle, triangle or just random bunched up form tied with a thread (jute, or any yarn) between two clamps tightly and then immerse it in to a prepared dye bath. Silk can be both hot and cold dyed, depending on the dyes you are using. I did cold dyeing. Anyways, if you have done clamp dying as many a times I have, you would want to explore options of clamps (I always try to find things that are available at home) it just makes things more easy and the entire process less exp

In my last post I had worked made a stylized animal print in various repeats. To further the same design, I decided to make its color ways to explain the effect just a few colors to a design can do and the impact it has on the entire design, to an extent that it may as well change the consumers and the product range itself. It may elevate a design or make it look completely common. Ice always been told that a color can make or break a design, and I have grown to be a firm believer in that. Here are the worked color ways of the previous design in straight, mirror and half drop repeat format. Half Drop repeat: Mirror repeat:          Straight repeat: 

Designing for kids or creating prints catering to that particular area has always been a challenge for me. Doodling or complicated damask, pen and  inks are my comfort zone. I actually do not have to think on those subjects, but to create a format or motif for kids takes me months to come up with. I still have not  figured out why so, but I would like to blame  it on the "designers have their own niche syndrome"  which brings me back to my post as to why I decided to indulge in the area that forces me to "brain storm" at the first place. As a mother, when I sit with my girls to draw with them, sometimes they would ask me "mamma make me drawing of a dog or cat etc. and like all parents I oblige, the drawings are rarely accurate (we all aren't natural Da Vinci's here) but the caricatures or flat two dimensional images made my kids happy, they would color it , keep it, collect it. What intrigued me the most was that the children recognized the animals w