Meet Alice - Our 2024 Art Competition WINNER!
Simply Hammocks recently organised an art competition for students from schools across the Northeast, giving them a chance to unleash their creativity. The task was to design something inspired by a 2024 event. Each school had one month to come up with something spectacular, experimenting with different ideas.
The winning school was the Northern School of Arts, with a stunning pride design by student Alice. We're thrilled to be collaborating with Alice to create her own collection of pride hammocks, which if all goes to plan will be available for purchase here at Simply Hammocks.
Here's what Alice says about the hammock creation process and her winning the competition with her remarkable design:
My name is Alice Shilton-Hart, a textile designer specialising in textile surface design with about 2 years of experience from college. I have always had an interest in textiles since I was very young. I have done a lot for other people such as making costumes for people in my sister’s dance group which I used to volunteer for, and I had a very successful face mask business in lockdown when I was 14, selling hundreds of facemasks across the whole of England.
This has been my favourite project I have ever been asked to do. I loved being given a brief from a client and working to their needs and wants.
The inspiration for this piece came from being given a theme of 2024 and that pride was coming up. I chose this because I love rainbow-happy colours and I wanted to challenge myself with layering the different colours, and I’m a part of the LGBTQIA+ so this was a really fun exciting theme for me to do. The equipment I used to print on the hammock, is binder and screen print pigments.
I began with lots of designs and then scribbled designs on paper for some rough placement plans for the hammock. I then finalised a plan design and made it on Photoshop with the designs coloured, in a repeat, to see how the outcome would look. This design couldn’t be carried out onto the hammock due to the sizing of the screens my designs were put onto. I then had to re-think my layout plan, I kind of just started placing things randomly and more ideas just came naturally.
The end result I love more than my original plan so I was so happy about that as I was nervous about how it would turn out after I couldn’t complete the original. Personally, I think it was so fun and flows so nicely. After I had printed the whole hammock, I then started to add mark-making embroidery stitches for extra depth to the piece. Adding the black screens and black embroidery helps break up some of the areas where there’s a lot of bright colours and gives it a nice balance.
I had 2 challenges when making this hammock.
I had 2 challenges when making this hammock.
My first challenge was that I misjudged the size of the screens compared to the hammock when putting my designs on. So, I wasn’t able to continue with my original design plan due to it not being able to fit on correctly.
My second challenge was because there weren’t enough fabric screens so the print room technician put one of my page designs onto a paper screen. Because of this, the ink wasn’t going onto the fabric properly, it was coming out very faintly and patchy. So, we had to wait until another screen was available to fix that before I could fully complete my hammock design.
My second challenge was because there weren’t enough fabric screens so the print room technician put one of my page designs onto a paper screen. Because of this, the ink wasn’t going onto the fabric properly, it was coming out very faintly and patchy. So, we had to wait until another screen was available to fix that before I could fully complete my hammock design.
The completed textile piece turned out amazing and I’m so proud of my design. It is a unique design, and I love the colours and the extra depth the embroidery gives. This project making the pride hammock, not only showcased my ability to work to a client's wants and needs, but it has really benefited me to learn lots of new skills such as time management, communication, and customer service.
I have received a lot of positive feedback for this textile design and I am eager to take on new challenges and collaborate with like-minded brands.
