Leslie Keating of Maze and Vale is a serial creative, picking up ideas and inspiration from “absolutely everywhere. I try to keep track of them in a sketchbook, where I also keep a ridiculous number of lists of things to do and projects for consideration.”
maze and vale – quill (peacock) – certified organic cotton
Named for her two daughters, Maze and Vale grew out of Leslie’s intense love of fabric and her background as a graphic designer. Hand screen prints on natural fibres, in a range of muted tones punctuated with bold, her designs are clean, simple and graphic.
“About 7 years ago I fell in love with sewing in general but particularly with quilting and wanted more control over the prints and colours I could use in my work. I’d worked with a lot of hand printed fabric before and decided to use my graphic design skills to create my own textiles. I started carving stamps and using them to print on cotton and linen and then moved onto screen printing as a way to cover larger areas more quickly. Screen printing was way too much fun to stop, and so I decided to start selling the fabric I was creating.”
maze and vale – seedpods (perfect red) – organic cotton
To keep her ideas fresh, Leslie uses a variety of techniques with her original sketches, working between hand-carved stamps, pen sketches, or even working straight into Illustrator. All her prints are pulled by hand in her one room studio, and all the colours are custom mixed by her using environmentally friendly, water based textile inks and are printed on natural, sustainable fibres of hemp, organic cotton and linen.
Her list of favourite artists and designers is long. “I honestly couldn’t name them all but a few that immediately spring to mind are Lotta Jansdotter, Julie Paterson of Cloth, Arounna Khounnoraj of Bookhou and Lara Cameron of Ink & Spindle – all amazing designers who screen print their own work, as I do.”
maze and vale – tiny forest in alabaster
I asked Leslie if there was anything quirky or curious about her that she’d like to share. She replied, “I very often get my rights and lefts wrong which I thought was pretty ridiculous until I read an article a while ago that said it was a common trait of highly creative people. Now I see it as a badge of honour! I’m also terrible at remembering people’s names unless I see them written down, another quirk of being so visually oriented, I guess.”
Leslie never lets the bad experiences get to her. “I tend to just roll with the punches; it makes life a lot easier, and some really beautiful work can come out of ‘mistakes’.”
maze and vale – verses – overcast – organic cotton
I love Leslie’s description of her design, Verses.
“Hand drawn marks that resembled text; I added and sketched until I had two paragraphs of unknown words. The paragraphs’ spacing is a bit random and wonky and it somehow makes my heart ache just a little bit, like there is something life-changingly important written there, if only you knew the language.”
maze and vale – xox – velvet black – organic cotton
Her best piece of advice? “To ignore what other people are doing and follow your own style. If your work is from the heart and you put 100% into it with no shortcuts, your audience will find you. (Well, you also have to put it out there in order to be found 😉 )”
You can find more of Leslie’s gorgeous fabrics in her Etsy shop, mazeandvale.