There is a fun Instagram account called @_basketclub_ that shares an open brief to design a basket periodically around the theme of an emoji. This month’s theme is 🪡 so I couldn’t resist!
I have been designing a series of 3D embroidered breakfast foods (so far only the fried egg is released) so it seemed natural to continue with this breakfast theme. A banana came to mind as a fun potential basket, and it was an interesting industrial design challenge to figure out!
Here are several images of the process, which are a good illustration of my design process lately, both for my own projects and freelance projects. I bought a banana as a reference, photographed it, 3D modelled the shape and perforated the model for embroidery. I then 3D printed the pieces to test it and realized that the profile needed to be more rounded so I modified the model and printed it again. I then selected yarn colours and stitched the full shape, creating an integrated hinge on the back so that the basket opens.
I now have a full scale functional embroidered banana to use as a basket to store small items!
This process helped me figure out how to apply my embroidered system to full 3D shapes (with no back) and now it feels like almost any shape is possible! What shape should I do next?