INK & SPINDLE
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Lara Cameron and Caitlin Klooger are the team behind Ink & Spindle. Passionately inspired by the Australian landscape and its flora and fauna, they create planet-friendly, timeless, screen-printed textiles.
Lara, who studied web and graphic design, changed career paths when she began to seek something more tactile: “I like the challenges of printed-pattern design. I like the combination of creative and technical skills. I just started experimenting with patterns. I had a craft blog when they were all the rage, before Instagram.” At the time, Lara was not yet printing her own cloth but used another print studio and sold her fabrics on Etsy.
“I was doing the same thing,” says Caitlin. “I was in landscape architecture but didn’t want to go back to it after a maternity leave.” While at home with two babies, Caitlin started designing, found a printer, and sold her fabrics online. Caitlin and Lara got to know each other at trade shows but did not work together for another five years.
Lara cofounded Ink & Spindle with other partners in 2008. When two members of the original trio left to pursue different dreams, Lara and Caitlin joined forces. “I was still really excited and keen to keep going, and it was so good when Caitlin came on board. She had fresh energy and enthusiasm!”
The partners work together on all aspects of the business. “Yeah,” Lara laughs, “we try to share the fun jobs and the crap jobs. We’ve got complementary qualities. Caitlin’s a bit more like, Let’s just get it done!, and I’m a bit more of a perfectionist. We meet in the middle, and it’s a good middle.”
“I think we’re lucky we found each other, because we have similar tastes and styles and aesthetics,” adds Caitlin.
In 2018, Ink & Spindle relocated its studio to the Abbotsford Convent arts precinct, less than two and a half miles (four kilometers) from Melbourne’s central business district. The protected heritage site hosts more than a hundred artists, wellness practitioners, and community organizations. Caitlin and Lara’s space accommodates their 42.6-foot (13-meter) print table, studio equipment, and workshop plus room to spare for a retail space, where they offer customers ready-made home goods and fabric yardage.
Printing with screens measuring 5.9 feet (1.8 meters) tall requires two people at all times. While Ink & Spindle employs several part-time staff members and hosts interns, Lara and Caitlin are always part of the printing team: “There’s a lot we’ve learned over the years...how many passes of the squeegee, which squeegee to use, and how the different base cloths influence that,” Caitlin explains. “There are a lot of things that we kind of know subliminally.”
“The limitations of screen printing help with the design,” Caitlin says. “You can focus on the design—it gives you structure.” Most Ink & Spindle fabric prints use only two colors, but some “overprinted artworks,” created specifically as wall art, use as many as sixteen layers of color. Each color in a design requires a different screen, representing one layer or part of an overall pattern; the images on the screens tessellate to make a seamless repeat. Through overprinting, screen flips, and displacements, Lara and Caitlin can create a range of patterns from a single screen.
“It’s about being clever with our processes. We work with a limited color palette and very simplistic equipment,” says Lara.
“[We] keep our palette fairly restrained because we like to be able to reuse the same colors, not have to be constantly mixing up new colors. We keep it quite harmonious and work within that; we have a palette of colors we love, and the whole palette looks good together,” adds Caitlin.
The inks used at Ink & Spindle are water based and certified organic but are only available in a “bright, vivid, vibrant palette.” Caitlin and Lara use those pigments to create their own palette by mixing colors and adding extender to make the ink more transparent, “knocking it back, bringing it to a more natural color.” Using thinned ink allows the base fabric to be visible beneath the printing, incorporating the beauty of the organic cotton, eco-linen, or hemp cloth as part of the design.
Making customized fabrics for interiors is a large part of Ink & Spindle’s business. Clients can select a base cloth, a design, and colors to create the perfect fabric:
Allowing people to customize means that they’re involved in part of the design—then they have ownership of that piece...They’re really thinking about the context and choosing something that they feel is going to be timeless and classic...because what we produce isn’t cheap. Part of our ethos is producing something that has longevity. It’s less about trends; it’s more about slow design, thoughtful design, and a timeless color palette.
Lara and Caitlin work together in every aspect of their business except for the initial development of design ideas. They both prefer to work alone and be in “their own little world.” Lara often records inspiration through her photography: “I might see a leaf or a branch or a little bit of fern and think, I really like that. I take a photo and manipulate the image to turn it into a screen. By the time you get to the end result, you almost can’t tell it was a photo.” Caitlin uses a similar route from inspiration to finished print by recording her inspiration in drawings and watercolor paintings. She transforms the whole image—or a particular element or texture—into a repeat pattern on the computer.
“Often an idea brews for a long time,” says Lara. “Sometimes it can take a year or more to finally figure [it] out...And then other times you just do a quick sketch and that’s it!”
“We don’t collaborate on designs as much as we discuss and develop...One of us will have the original design idea, but we work quite collaboratively in terms of what colors to print and what cloth to print on and how to turn it into a reality,” says Caitlin.
Prints by Ink & Spindle (clockwise from top left): “Kurrajong,” “Kangaroo Paw,” “Spotted Quoll,” “Budgie and Banksia”
Lara and Caitlin acknowledge the challenges of producing hand-printed, environmentally friendly fabrics in a world of mass production—particularly the financial costs of materials and labor. They are heartened, however, by the fact that consumers are increasingly considering the provenance of fabrics. “People are now thinking more about the process,” Caitlin observes. “Where does it come from? Who made it? They’re wanting to have a little bit more of the story behind it. They want to be engaged with it.”
“Another problem is time and excitement management!” Caitlin and Lara laugh. “We’ve just got so many ideas...We have to funnel it down!”
Lara and Caitlin fully embrace their goals for Ink & Spindle: “We can’t imagine being part of some big, giant enterprise where everything is done by somebody else...We’re always refining what we do, making it more amazing, more beautiful, more polished, more environmentally friendly—just building on all of the things that we’re doing at the moment.”
“Modern fabric design is about being timeless, classic, and ethical; the provenance of the fabric is part of the story.”
