New website for The Needle Shop

This has been a fun week, work-wise—I finalized logos and business cards for a few different clients, plus two websites that I designed went live. There's nothing as satisfying as finishing things.

One of the finished things is a revamped website for The Needle Shop, Chicago's DIY sewing school and fabric store in Bucktown. While mulling over the initial design concepts, store owner Rachel Epperson had the brilliant idea of commissioning Ward Nipper to produce some custom illustrations for the site. (Ward often draws elegant, bare-chested ladies like these, but since The Needle Shop is in the business of selling fabric, we agreed it would be counterproductive and a tad too racy to start a shirtless trend.)

My favorite thing on the site? This ottoman. It's my Frond print. So meta: I sketched out that design, digitized it, had it printed on fabric, which was made into an ottoman, which was digitally photographed, sketched by Ward, then digitized again, colored, and ultimately uploaded to the internet. Next, maybe I will make a drawing of my computer monitor displaying this post, then scan that and email it back to Rachel.

Zak Hardage, coder extraordinaire, programmed the new Needle Shop site in Shopify, and Rachel spent a zillion hours loading it up with delicious fabrics, books and patterns for us. Enjoy!