Putting together a Tahitian pareo design, Part V

Colors are looking great! Here's a sneak peek at our new Tehani Pareo, Black Pearl Designs original artwork. After working with the colors, tweaking and retweaking, we finally came up with colors that we are more than excited about. The five colors that ended up the winners – Arii Red, Mango Orange, Yellow Bounty, Green Tiare and Poehere Blue. It was a difficult task to narrow down the choices. We're excited even more because we know we have other exotic colorways to choose from for our reprint next year.

The reason it took so long is that the printing company didn't exactly use pantone colors that would standardize the process. So going back and forth with the printer was a little long. In the end we finally "eyeballed" the colors, tints and shades from printouts. The actual design had been finished long before. The colors, however, were the hold up.

Off to the printing press. The next step will be to approve the strike offs. The strike offs are samples of each of the colors. This is a critical step that can make all the work done up to now pay off or it can really delay the project. We have five colorways. But the printing company does tropical prints all the time and they are used to island style prints. I'm not too worried...

The strike off should be getting to us within the next week at the latest and so we'll hopefully approve everything and send it back for the full order. We hope to get the fabric by mid December. Pretty much too late for Christmas but a great way to start the new year off with a bang.

Before final approval, there are a few details that we need to take care of such as the border - no border, no name printed on the selvage or top of the roll. We principally make pareos with the material so an extra cut along the top of the pareo is not exactly desired. We also need to verify the fabric style which is 100% cotton broadcloth in this case. Just to remind everyone, we chose this fabric because of it's quality, draping attribute, natural material and comfort. And lastly the delivery location will be verified.

One thing we won't have to worry about is dealing with the customs office. The printing company has a clearing house and the fees are already built into the costs. So no headaches and worries about this step is very welcome.

All in all, we're just eagerly waiting for the strike offs and the arrival of the full order.