Vanessa Arbuthnott Fabrics - The Forest Collection

During the Spring of 2021 when museums were closed and travel was limited, it was the natural world around her which fueled her imagination. Vanessa spent many hours experimenting with the art of potato printing, carving, and then hand printing more and more intricate and delicate shapes. Exploring the interplay between negative and positive spaces.

“The flawless and fascinating shapes of ferns have captivated me since I was a child. I would while away hours walking through forests and woods, collecting fern fronds and taking them home to press and draw. I was endlessly captivated by their forms; sometimes symmetrical and other times not.”

A little behind the scenes, where the magic happens in Vanessa’s kitchen with the humble potato.

Here is Vanessa speaking first hand about her design process, including the potato prints and process above, in our ‘New Forest’ highlights on Instagram.

New designs for 2022

Five designs in a total of 27 colourways. Four are printed on a unique eco-cloth, woven from 60% linen and 40% organic cotton yarns especially for Vanessa in Lancashire, Britain. The fifth design is my first foray into embroidered We have introduced beautiful new colours including Ochre, Lichen, Marigold and Moss. The fifth fabric design is a most striking, contemporary woven stripe in an earthy soft orange called Carrot.

All of the new colours have been carefully chosen to compliment Vanessa’s colour palette allowing seamless integration with previous collections and current trends.

Buy Forest Collection fabrics as made to measure curtains.

Wild Fern

This is a simple, printed asymmetrical stylized fern leaf – with shapes down the centre reflecting the line of dotty structures you see on the reverse of fronds, commonly called fruit dots. As flowerless plants, ferns use these structures as cases that hold their reproductive material

Lily Pink / Ochre / Moss

Duck Egg, Smoke / Soft Cornflower, Speedwell

Little Fern

This design is a smaller scale negative version of the Wild Fern, reminiscent of Indian block prints

Tomato / Mallow / Lily Pink / Peach

Ochre / Moss / Lichen / Speedwell

Soft Cornflower / Cornflower / Scree / Charcoal

Sow and Scatter

I designed this relaxed and fun print using potatoes cut in the positive form, scanned in my marks, then used the computer to turn it into a negative pattern

Moss / Cornflower

Lattice Leaf

I have always loved the structure of a trellis and here, I have taken the bud from my Life and Eternity Detail design, and encapsulated it inside this lattice

Soft Cornflower, Peach / Lily Pink, Mallow / Ochre, Lichen

Moss, Damson / Soft Cornflower, Moss / Moss, Cornflower / Scree, Soft Cornflower

New Linen Union Weave: MALMO

Striking and contemporary stripe, woven with a blend of organic cotton and linen in an earthy soft orange called Carrot. This beautiful new design also incorporates embroidery

Carrot, Cornflower, Cranberry

New colourways of existing designs:

Lapland Stripe

This woven linen stripe is an old favourite and has been re-coloured to coordinate with these new prints, combining soft pinks and blues

Soft Cornflower, Cornflower, Damson, Lily Pink

Up the Garden Path

We have added new colours of this beautiful design

Day Lily / Light Lichen / Soft Cornflower / Cornflower

Life and Eternity Detail

An early block print of mine, now in more colours to coordinate perfectly with my other designs

Tomato / Ochre / Cornflower

Simple Ticking Detail

This timeless striped design now comes in Peach, Marigold, Lichen, and Cornflower

Peach / Marigold / Lichen / Cornflower

Stockholm Stripe

This is the first time I've printed a Stockholm Stripe design on Linen Union cloth

Scree, Soft Cornflower, Charcoal