Designing Tea Towels: A Collaboration with Northside Girls
June 02, 2021

Designing Tea Towels: A Collaboration with Northside Girls

Home Gather Textiles Project Blog Designing Tea Towels: A Collaboration with Northside Girls

Our recent round of craft collaborations wouldn't have been complete without our long-time collaborators The Northside Girls! You’ve likely met Master Weaver Shannon Nelson if you’ve been into Gather’s studio. The Northside Girls is a small craft house that she runs along with her nieces Ellinor and Aisha. Their beautifully-finished tea towels and luxurious blankets have been favourites at local craft fairs and in-store at Gather for years now. For this round of collaboration, The Northside Girls have woven a special run of their signature striped tea towels in Gather’s spring Greenhouse Collection colours. 

We caught up with The Northside Girls to ask about designing with stripes, working with the Greenhouse colours, and what's next for their crafty crew!

 

Gather: Stripes are central to The Northside Girls' design aesthetic. What draws you to stripes? When designing a new colourway, how do you make decisions about the arrangement of your stripes?
Northside Girls: Stripes are just such a classic aspect of design and they're so universal to any space you may find yourself in--whether that's rustic styled interior to match Swedish ticking cloths or a contemporary interior paired with bold modern stripes. Given any space there's a plethora of stripes to match it, which can't be said for every element of design out there. When we create new colourways we always try to make something that is cohesive and hopefully can bring a little inspiration to wherever our tea towels may find their home.
Gather: You recently made a series of tea towels using the colours from Gather's Greenhouse collection. What was it like designing with the Greenhouse colours? Why are you excited to be collaborating with us?
 

Northside Girls: As weavers we often get drawn to similar colours and combinations and it can be difficult to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and we can't say that we're immune to this. The great part of designing with the Greenhouse colours is that it pushes us to work with colours and combinations that we might not have otherwise used and we're always thankful for artistic inspiration. We always have a great time when we work with Gather, they have been such a huge part of our journey and helping us connect to the community of wonderful weavers and creators that share our love of all things fiber.

 

Gather: I hear that some of the Northside Girls might be moving away from the North Side! What does the future look like for you? 

 

Northside Girls: Our future is taking flight, it seems that members of The Northside Girls' life paths are diverging and we're so excited to expand our horizons and take these opportunities to learn more about weaving and the rich history of craft that these paths lead us down. We hope to refocus what a NSG product is and we are starting to coalesce all our favorite creations into kits, so that we may share the love we get from creating our woven goods with our fellow weavers community.

Check out Tea Towels woven by The Northside Girls as part of our Greenhouse Collection!