Hi! My name is Kate. I am a textile Designer based in Dunedin, New Zealand, Aotearoa. This is a project that comes from my loves of labour intensive textile processes, natural history museums, and designing textile products.

I keep meticulous records of all of my dye and printing ink colours

I am in love with a Japanese print technique called katazome. The frog canister and art prints are made using this technique. In this image, the rice paste resist has been printed through the hand cut frog skeleton stencil.

This is an image of the katazome rice paste resist before it has been steamed for an hour. It takes around 2 hours to make the paste, one hour steaming and one hour mixing it together. I only make it around once a year.

After the resist paste has dried for around 8 hours (dry but not too dry, or it cracks!) you paint a mixture of procion dye mixed with manutex (a seaweed extract) over the top. Then you wait for it to dry, then wash out your fabric. This leaves you with a beautiful print, where the dye washes out where the resist was. This pattern piece is a sample that didn't fully wash out.

Between projects it can be up to a year before I revisit an idea - here I am looking at a collection of pink and grey samples before I mix a new batch of ink.

The knotted fan coral print is printed from a hand cut stencil. Here is the drawing I did before I cut the stencil.

This is the stencil partially cut. This knotted fan coral is from a lovely specimen at my local museum, the Animal Attic at Otago Museum.

thinking about the right shade of grey for my next print

An image of the Franciscana Dolphin stencil after I finished cutting it by hand

The Franciscana Dolphin art print and a4 case have an additional layer of hand painted detail to really add volume to this skeletal print