Hello! My name is Carolyn Bouchard, and I love sewing and graphic design. I have the best husband and 2 awesome sons. I quit my full time job as an Art Director in the beginning of 2016 when my 1st was born, and have been home with them since. ⠀
I take on as much freelance design work as I can, and would really love to find some companies whose style would be a good fit for my hand embroidered illustration and lettering. Feel free to reach out or recommend me!⠀
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A little more about me:⠀
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I love making art, and tend to get lost in production. My favorite thing is finding an interesting way to make something look unique and beautiful. Craft is important to me.
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Much of my work indirectly reflects my being a stay at home mom because, honestly, that’s a lot of what my life is right now, and I’m just going with it. It was a huge, scary shift (especially as an older mom that worked for 10+ years previously), and although there are trade offs, I love it. I think it has value that's overlooked, just as anything difficult to put a $ value on tends to be. I plan on making work in the future that explores the trade offs women have to make, and needlework is the perfect medium for doing so, which is probably one of the reasons that I love it so much.⠀
Thank you for looking!
It was an honor to work with a lettering artist as wonderful as Danielle Evans on this Scarlet Letter collaboration! She developed and refined the sketches, and I got to try my hand at lettering the small quote in the stem of the A. The stitching itself was some of the more delicate work I’ve ever done (process shots throughout my Instagram feed!). Photos and styling by Danielle, modeled by Isabella Silveira.
I imagine The Scarlet Letter means different things to different women. I reread the book as I worked on the project, and was really struck by how strong Hester’s character was- her circumstances were unfair, especially compared to Dimmesdale’s social success, but she owned it, kept going, did her best, carved a useful place out for herself, and achieved a kind of redemption. Her fine embroidery (even on the Scarlet Letter itself) represented a dignity and a refusal to give up. In the end, she keeps the letter on, even as she could probably lose it if she’d wanted, and it seems to become almost a symbol of pride. By contrast, the minister’s dishonest living literally kills him. I enjoyed the book very much, and got way more out of it after all my life experiences, than I did the last time I read it at age 14.
My 4 year old son became very interested in sea shells. As we researched them together, I also became fascinated by their patterns and shapes. Together we compiled a list of shells from every letter of the alphabet. I then painted them in gouache.
My son likes to learn about the natural world, so although facts about sea snails are unusual for a kids book, I wrote it in a way that would be interesting to him.
The project was finished during our time in quarantine, so it really commemorates a time for us. I will always remember the afternoons spent painting shells with him.
The first of a set of 3 illustrations for Synchrony Bank on the subject of joining bank accounts.
I am excited (and nervous) to announce the first piece of a personal project I will be working on over 2017. It is the first of 12 in a series I’m calling “Body Text” that explores our complicated relationship to our clothing. Follow along on my instagram and/or tumblr blog, hope you all enjoy!
The topic of my first piece is sashiko stitching. I felt that this was a perfect topic to kick off my project with, as there is not only a lot to work with visually, but the idea behind it resonates with me personally as well.
Sashiko was originally used by Japanese peasants to reinforce and winterize their clothing. The small running stitches would reinforce stress points, and repair worn places or tears. Seamwork.com has a good short history on it. It originated in the rural north of Japan, where it was too cold to grow cotton. Industrialized fabric production didn’t reach Japan until the 1870’s, and even then, it was very expensive. Therefore, cloth was mostly made by hand, and represented a huge amount of labor. Not wanting to waste any scraps, sashiko stitching enabled old fabric to be pieced together, and greatly extended the life of the cloth. It became a decorative thing as well as a functional one, with it’s own technique and designs.
Conceptually, what I like about sashiko is the idea of embracing the flawed or imperfect. Patches and wear are not hidden, but made their own thing, more beautiful. I think this is a good metaphor for how to live life- acceptance of change and fate as aspects of human life. It’s interesting to me because clothes are often worn as a shield, or a mask- they project an image of how we would like to be seen. And this is often a good thing- you don’t wear the same thing to a job interview as you would wear around the house, because you want your potential boss to know that you will take the job seriously and be professional. If you go to a party, it helps make an exciting atmosphere if the guests dress in special outfits. However, I think that this idea can be taken too far; with clothing so cheap, it can become a substitute for real interests and personality.
I am trying to now repair my clothing rather than buy new, and embrace the wear. I think it is important to let the mask down a little, and hopefully by appearing a more vulnerable, let others know that it’s ok to as well.
The words on the back are based off of the idea that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.
Technique:
Sashiko was originally done in white thread on indigo fabric, and is geometric, with the pattern based on a grid. The traditional patterns are really beautiful, and look like abstracted hills, clouds, or waves. Here is a pinboard I made of some that I liked. Looking at them, I wonder if the different designs were influenced by the nature surrounding the places they originated from? I tried to keep this in mind when figuring out my own design.
Sashiko is relatively easy, but there are a few rules. I couldn’t adhere to all of them for this project, and what I’ve made isn’t super authentic- but then, traditional sashiko didn’t incorporate lettering. I just used it as a jumping off point. Most of the rules are about what should happen when the thread lines intersect, and usually, they just shouldn’t cross. Stitches should end at the turn of a corner, and intersections should be open. Here is a good run-down of the rules. I realized while doing this why those rules are in place- leaving a little space where the threads cross really creates a nice design when the piece is finished. I mostly got that right, except for a few areas on the “clouds” in the center, especially where I had different types of patterns intersecting.
Lessons Learned:
I discovered a pretty amazing product for this project- Sulky Solvy. I’ve used water soluble interfacing in the past, but never a water soluble stabilizer. This stuff worked perfectly to transfer my complicated design, as it is transparent, and I could trace my design directly on it. I tried seamstress chalk first, and it was a total failure. My usual method of drawing straight on the fabric with a chalk pencil didn’t work for this, either, as it was based on such a specific grid. The Sulky Solvy was perfect for this project, especially since denim and sashiko thread are made to stand up to washings! I was also surprised with how well it took all the drawing, stitching, and general manhandling I subjected it to. I’d highly recommend trying it.
I have a few things I would change about the lettering. After I’d already started and there was no turning back, I received 2 books I ordered about lettering: “Lettering Charts for Students and Artists” by Phyllis Brown, and “In Progress” by Jessica Hische. With my first reading of these excellent books, I realized there were some spacing and letterform things that I could have done better. In this project, it’s not such a huge deal because the letters are so tactile, but in the future, I think I can do better on the technical aspects of lettering.
Photographs by Haroon Bhatti of Pomade.
I think a lot about invisible work. In 2016, I went from full-time employment to staying home with my son. It was a big mental shift. For a decade plus, I'd gone to offices, worked, and received a paycheck. At home, I care for the kids and do most of the household management stuff. Once I had a handle on it, I added some freelance design work. I'm busier than before, but don't have the psychological validation of a regular paycheck.
Money is tangible- you can hold it and say, “Here is what my labor is worth!” (Or, “Is this ALL I’m worth?”) It was disconcerting.
Thoughts from 3 years deep:
The benefits of labor go somewhere, obviously. Things have to be done, matter a lot (food, cleanliness, health, cultivating relationships), and I’m busy doing them as well as I can. I now see this as a more direct line to my values. .
Money is your labor abstracted, and abstracting it is not cost-free. Tax and travel are probably the biggest costs, but there are others. One of the most enlightening exercises I ever did was taking my salary minus taxes, and subtracting the cost of food bought at work, work clothing, socializing with coworkers, transportation…I didn’t make the wage I thought I did.
Consider: if I hire a maid, I pay them, and this counts as “economic activity.” If I clean my own house, it doesn’t count. If I am hired as a nanny, this counts as “economic activity.” If I care for my own children, it doesn’t count. Yet the job gets done either way.
(Of course, there are many good non-economic reasons for people's choices. Perhaps you hire a maid so you can spend your time on activities you enjoy more. Or perhaps you like to have things cleaned in a specific way, so you prefer doing it yourself. etc)
It’s easy to look at this and see how “Growth in GDP!” or “More people in the workforce!” can sound good and be true, while also not actually producing much. Is this good? Who benefits? How is it not just running in place?
This is the second piece of a personal project I am working on over 2017 entitled “Body Text” that explores our complicated relationship to our clothing. Follow along on my instagram and/or tumblr blog.
I long had in my mind that I wanted to try making a stitched infographic, so it was exciting to finally get my act together and actually do it! I chose as my subject matter our relationship to cheap clothing stores (fast fashion), and its effect on the environment. There has been quite a bit of awareness about this for the past few years, with many articles and a few books on the subject. (My sources are listed below.)
The topic of fast fashion resonates with me as it includes 2 areas I’m interested in- how to make your clothing feel like your own and express what you would like it to express; and managing money and resources. I think cheap clothing can work for or against both of these. Shopping constantly to keep up with trends can make everyone look pretty same-y. On the other hand, many of the cheap clothes are decently well-made, and can be customized, kept for a long time, and combined with more unique or handmade items. And obviously- shopping for cheap clothing can save a lot of money… as long as it isn’t done constantly. If the low cost of clothing is used to justify buying massive amounts, it becomes more expensive as you need more space to store the clothing (not to mention the time cost of all the shopping), it’s harder to move, and more expensive (especially if you look at the city-wide level) to dispose of.
One thing that really struck me while working on this project is how hidden a lot of the costs of purchasing cheap clothing are. According to what I read, the quality of much of the clothing we buy has gotten so poor that even if we donate it to charity, it’s unusable- even by very poor countries. As in, most of it is worth less than a nickel per pound, even to textile recyclers. And it costs A LOT for cities to dispose of- which we pay for via taxes.
It’s a deep topic that I admittedly haven’t fully investigated with this infographic. I can see doing full projects dedicated to exploring very narrow aspects. For example, I read about whole cities in China that are dedicated to producing one item- like neckties. And pondered whether extremely cheap clothing is worth the trade-off of not having the clothing manufactured in the US, and the associated loss of jobs (I don’t know the answer to that one, but lean towards “not worth it.”) I read some crazy statistics- for example, apparently if every man, woman, and child in China bought 2 pairs of wool socks, there would be no more wool left in the world! And wool isn’t even that expensive right now.
My take-away after doing this project and thinking about it is this: We all need to wear clothing, and that clothing needs to be manufactured somehow and somewhere. Probably buying less, but more expensive, clothing of higher quality manufactured in the US would be better, but that cat’s out of the bag, and it’s not going back in, at least not any time soon. We have to do the best we can with the reality as it stands today, though perhaps that reality will slowly change if enough people change their personal habits. I don’t think it’s terrible to shop at places like H&M, Uniqlo, Zara, etc. They carry good-looking products that are sometimes reasonably well-made and very cheap. But I think that the way to do it is to pick only what you really like and need, selecting the best quality you can from their offerings, with the mindset that you will wear it for a long time. Then, don’t treat them as disposable- take care of the clothes so that they last. Learn simple repairs, and repair them when you need to. Basically, shop for and treat cheap clothing the same that you would expensive items.
Personally, I am now thinking harder about what I really “need”. Do I already own something similar? How few pairs of something can I get away with? What do I own that I can I repair or alter to give it more life?
In the future, I may do projects on the topics of how to repair clothing, and how to tell a piece of clothing’s quality.
Sources
“Global fashion industry statistics - International apparel." FashionUnited. FashionUnited Group, 2016.
Vatz, Stephanie. “Why America Stopped Making Its Own Clothes.” KQED News. KQED Inc., May 24, 2013.
Conca, James. “Making Climate Change Fashionable - The Garment Industry Takes On Global Warming.” Forbes. Forbes Media, LLC., December 3, 2015.
Sweeny, Glynis. “Fast Fashion Is the Second Dirtiest Industry in the World, Next to Big Oil.” EcoWatch. EcoWatch, August 17, 2015.
Wicker, Alden. “Fast Fashion is Creating an Environmental Crises.” Newsweek. Newsweek, LLC., September 1, 2016.
Goldberg, Eleanor. “These African Countries Don’t Want Your Used Clothing Anymore.” Huffington Post. Oath Inc., September 19, 2016.
Final quote adapted from Jacob Lund Fisker of the Early Retirement Extreme blog, April 14, 2009
Other References:
Cline, Elizabeth L. "Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion." New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.
"Sort Cuts Make Long Delays"
--JRR Tolkien
Poster based off of the Tolkien quote and inspired by psychedelic posters from the 1960's. Poster is available for purchase off of Society6.
The idea behind this jacket was to embroider the anamorphic skull from Holbein’s painting, “The Ambassadors.” I’ve always liked the idea behind vanitas paintings- remember that you are mortal and life is short, so do the best you can with the time and resources you have. I thought that embroidering the stretched skull would be an interesting challenge, and I was hoping that the illusion would be easy to see. I went through a couple of different phrases and styles of lettering before settling on “Memento Mori”- I will probably document those, as well as my process for embroidering the skull, in the Body Text Project section of my site.
Photos by Hal Martin. Model is Ingrid Vollset. Many thanks to them both.
“Is it Any Wonder?” is one of my favorite Chameleons songs. I got to see them in 2011 at Home Sweet Home, and also got to meet Mark Burgess, who was a super cool dude and even tried to help me find my lost ring.
I used a single thread and mainly chain stitch, so it took forever; but I really like how fine and delicate just the single thread looks.
I was asked by Anya Ferring to embroider the ARTbutt logo on a custom pair of panties. I had a lot of fun with this, as it’s brighter and I got to improvise more with my stitching than I normally do. The idea was to have colors and stitches that would stand out in an editorial photo on the relatively small canvas of women’s underwear.
One challenge I faced with this was that the fabric needed to have a slight stretch to it, since it would be worn. I washed all of my thread to make sure it wouldn’t shrink or bleed and did a test embroidery to figure out how tight to hoop the fabric. I posted process shots and videos on my Instagram each step of the way.
I am excited to see the final editorial photos (as I am not stitching the panties themselves.) You can see (and buy) other ARTbutt pieces, and read all about the idea, here. Check back for final editorial photos by Ventiko later this summer.
A silly project based on one of my son's favorite sayings. This is also the first project I've used our new tablet to make the illustration before stitching.
I've had several conversations with friends lately, and noticed that so many people (myself included) go through periods where they feel like they should be doing "better" in some arbitrary way they've set for themselves (work-wise, socially, at life, on social media, whatever.) I think it's easy to make the mistake of thinking that everyone else has it together, and that you are the only one getting "left behind". It's kind of comforting to remember that most people feel this way sometimes, and that whatever it is you're thinking and feeling, chances are that a lot of other people feel the same.
I think that in general, we put way too much pressure on ourselves to try to do everything.
Remembering that my life won't last forever is something that I think about a lot since having my son. For the first time, it has started to feel like I won't have time to finish everything that I would like to. Memento Mori - "remember you must die"- sounds morbid, but I don't see it that way. I see it as a reminder to make the most out of, and do the best you can with, the time you have.
I illustrated the skull based off of the anamorphic skull in the Holbein painting, "The Ambassadors."
Stitched colorful poster inspired by Kazumasa Nagai's wonderful posters from the 1960's, and an assignment from my 8th grade art class. This was just as calming and meditative to do now as it was then (in fact more so, since this time I stitched the lines rather than drew them in ballpoint pen.) I found it interesting that although I started with the lines on the top and bottom as the same mirror images of each other, and I tried to stitch them the same, they really ended up doing their own thing as I worked outwards. I like how that came out and feel like it was important that I didn't just stitch one side and then mirror it in photoshop. To me, the differences and imperfections make it more interesting.
Poster available through Society6.
I stitched on this vest every day for a year. I am doing another for 2019. You can follow along with this project on Instagram.
This is (hopefully) a test piece for a larger collaboration with Nim Ben-Reuven. He is one of my favorite (and cleverest, most skilled) lettering artists, and I was flattered he was interested in seeing what his amazing Mineralphabet would look like in stitch. It was super fun to do! This is the first time I’ve tried to translate watercolor into stitch. I’m really looking forward to turning this into a larger project.
Colorful embroidered initials for "Stitch it Yourself" book.
A quick way to test new techniques.
I recreated Black Sabbath Master of Reality in 3ft x 3ft fabric. I like the album cover art because the letters are obviously hand drawn- for example, all of the “B”s look really different from each other. I used sewn black leather to replicate the look of the embossed bottom letters. The top purple letters are probably the most complicated thing I have ever hand-appliqued, but I think the look of them is pretty exact compared to the original artwork.
Erina Dempsey and I collaborated on 2 appliqued and embroidered suits for Jon Spencer. The first used blue and black silk, and leather piping, and blue and black embroidery thread. The second used black silk, gold leather, and black and gold embroidery thread. Photos by Veronica Ibarra.
Silk and leather hand-embroidered and appliqued patch.
Hand-embroidered ampersand self-promotional poster.
Poster available through Society6.
Employee Benefits Infographic illustrating the results of a survey Entertainment Benefits Group conducted. The infographic went out with their press release and up on their blogs.
EBG provides employees with benefits such as tickets to movies, plays, and theme parks, so I used ticket motifs as decorative elements in the illustration.
The threads roughly corresponded to .5pt vector lines. I counted how many threads to make 100% K, then figured out what 90%, 80%, etc would be by dividing that number.
Micro cross stitch.
Visualization exercise for Creative Pep Talk's MFBA class, 2016. What I would like for the future :)
The posters are now available on Society6. Additionally, if you're an educator that could use these and don't want to go through Society6 for some reason, feel free to reach out through email and I'll send you the files.
I created these posters with my friend, a software engineer at Google, to help teach Lego robotics to 6th graders. He volunteers through a Google program that teaches underprivileged children in New York programming. The best thing about this project for me was getting together with my friend and having him describe how Lego Mindstorms works. It took about an hour for me to get it (not that I'm an expert or understand all the ins and outs by any means), and the differences between how my very math-centric friend would describe how it works, and the way I understood it, was super interesting.
I was surprised at how poor the user interface is on the program. Much of it is tiny and confusing, with icons that are difficult to see, look way too similar to each other, and don't make sense without a computer science background. After having it described to me, I do understand why the choices were made to do things the way they are, but it would be a little confusing to me to keep some of it straight (and I'm not an under privileged 12 year old!) I was also very surprised that there were no vector icons that I could find, and so I recreated the ones on the poster (which I actually enjoyed doing.)
The Molecule Project is a water cafe in the east village in New York. I worked on their marketing collateral, and designed a promotional book for them to help sell their filters.
Global Partners for Development is a non-profit based in Northern California that works directly with community leaders in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to identify and implement development projects in the areas of education and public health.
I designed Global Partners for Development's 2017 Annual Report. They wanted it less colorful than last year's, and had Cook's Illustrated in mind as a design inspiration.
I'd done several infographics over the year to explain their process, and these were incorporated into the annual report.
I was invited to submit 2 pieces for "Stitch It Yourself." It featured step-by-step instructions on how to recreate the designs.
Hand-sewn alphabet based on traditional embroidery motifs.
Blackwork style butterfly featured in "Stitch it Yourself."
An infographic illustration for NewYork.com about Central Park.
I was the Art Director at American Spa, a monthly B2B magazine, from 2013-2015. I managed the Art Department, including design, production, and photo shoot art direction, as well as led a mini redesign of the magazine during my time there.
I designed a logo and branding for Ilene Godofsky, a Certified Holistic Health Coach based in New York City. Her focus is on vegan, gluten-free recipes that are colorful, not complicated.
BizBash Media is an editorial brand that covers events and meetings throughout North America. BizBash also publishes BizBash magazine, the National Venue and Supplier Guide, produces the BizBash IdeaFest expos and conferences, and publishes a series of daily and weekly newsletters. I worked with the Design Director from 2008-2014 to design and lay out all pages, retouch all photos for print, and design marketing and trade show materials. The magazines underwent three redesigns during that time, which I helped create. In addition, I did event, catering, and portrait photography for use on the website and in print. In 2013, a special issue on Building Better Meetings won the Best Subject-Related Package Award by the ABM, the Association of Business Information and Media Companies, at the 59th annual Jess H. Neal Awards.
Global Partners for Development is a non-profit based in Northern California that works directly with community leaders in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to identify and implement development projects in the areas of education and public health.
Their original logo was quite old. They felt that it looked too generic, dated, and was not the best fit for a non-profit dedicated to helping communities. In addition, they felt that the red color (though appropriate in the sense that it is the color of the Masai), was too strong. They wanted the new logo to feel established, authentic, trustworthy, and integrous. The challenge was that they also felt their donors recognized and were attached to their old logo, and so they didn’t want a complete departure, just a “soft rebrand”— basically, they wanted it to still be quickly recognizable as the same company, but with an update to make it look friendlier and more contemporary.
We went through several ideas and iterations before settling on a logo that’s a straightforward update on the old logo.
Embroidered clothing that I have created over the years (2005-2016).
Feature story design for BizBash magazine.
I have been building out the visual language of Entertainment Benefit Group's marketing work, creating infographics to illustrate studies they've conducted about employee benefits in the workplace. Visually, I was given only their colors (orange and blue) and fonts (Din and Folio) to work with.
It’s rare that something is both healthier, better for the environment, better looking, AND cheaper, so I think it’s worth spreading the information. Buy a cast iron pan! And not a new one, but an old one. The new ones are heavy, pre-seasoned, and rough (so that the pre-seasoning will stick, I think.) I got deep into researching these. Briefly, the 2 best/most well known brands are Griswold and Wagner. There’s tons of information online about how to date them based on the logo types, handles, heat rings, whatever. It’s all super interesting, but I won’t go into it here, except to say that one easy thing to look for is if it says “Made in the USA” on the bottom, then you know it’s from 1960 or later, and apparently that’s when the quality started to decline, so ideally you want one that does NOT say that. If you go to a vintage cast iron dealer, they can get really expensive. If you go to eBay, they are cheaper, but still get bid up pretty high. So- go to Goodwill’s answer to eBay, shopgoodwill.com (you’re welcome!) It works the same, and it’s way less picked over. Next, I found that refurbishing an old pan is super easy. I got a great deal on one, but it looked dirty and terrible. I soaked it in Easy-Off, scrubbed it with steel wool, soaked it in vinegar, and then reseasoned it, and it’s PERFECT. It’s completely non-stick, and unless you somehow manage to crack it, your grandkids will be using it to perfectly flip their over-easy eggs. No more eating Teflon, no more tossing pans that are no longer non-stick after 6 months. Finally, ALWAYS USE A METAL SPATULA!
