Print Spotlight: Terra Flora

September 15, 2021

The Terra Flora print is Variety Hour's first new print to be released since the launch of our Sketchbook Florals collection in November 2020. Designed by Melbourne textile artist Cassie Byrnes, every Variety Hour print has a story to tell; shedding light into the creative ingenuity of Cassie's artistic process.

Like all VH prints, the Terra Flora print story began as an exploration of colour and composition in Cassie's sketchbook, painted during a daily creative practice she held herself accountable to throughout first lockdown here in Melbourne in 2020. The initial design centred around a large protea, the Australian native floral that has informed a lot of work of Cassie's over the years.

That first exploration would sit dormant for almost a year, until March 2021 when Cassie was finally able to revisit the original idea and devote time to exploring it fully.

The colour palette was refined, a pattern was formed and after hours of experimentation and development, the final artwork was painted.

Once the physical artwork was complete, the process of transforming it into a repeating pattern began. The work was scanned in and digitally edited; the colour palette refined once more, details altered in the design, and the gold foil texture added in.

But the repeat pattern wouldn't be finalised until after our first round of print samples.

The sampling process allows us to check that the colours in Cassie's designs are translating correctly to whichever fabrics we choose to print on, and it's at this stage that, seeing the print repeated on a larger scale, Cassie can assess the continuity of the print and make adjustments to the digital file.

Across multiple sampling rounds, we explored a number of different options including, at one point, a brown and green bases for the print, as well as silhouetted versions across a number of different colour ways.

Then the real fun began. When working with a new collection—and especially a new print—we love to explore our existing range of styles as well as potential new styles that could better showcase the print.

In fact, our lounge button up and lounge pants were inspired after we sampled the print as a silhouetted style in a range of colour ways on the one length of fabric. We liked the complementary nature of the colour ways so much that we developed our two holiday-style lounge garments just from that sample length of fabric.

And before long, we had a complete collection featuring the Terra Flora print. We introduced three new garment styles: the Lounge Button Up, Lounge Pants and our beloved Vinnie Smock Dress.

Thank you to everyone who has shown such overwhelming support for this collection. It's been so popular that we've even had to recut some styles because they sold out so quickly!

We hope we can continue to create prints and collection that you love as much as this one.