Rachel DB Creative Makes Beautiful Towels, Bags and Cards from Original Drawings

Ask Rachel Dominguez-Benner for two words that describe her work, and she’ll tell you that “practical” is the first, with “beautiful” running a close second. In 2014, she and her husband moved to Dayton from Portland, Oregon. Four years later, she found herself craving a creative outlet, so she enrolled at Penland School of Craft in Bakersville, North Carolina, with a focus in yardage screen printing — the process of repeating the same pattern over lengths of fabric. 

Today, under the name Rachel DB Creative, Dominguez-Benner sells kitchen towels, tote bags, napkins, greeting cards and other products that display her original illustrations. 

“We’re so separated from the hands that actually make almost all of the goods that we use in our lives,” Dominguez-Benner says. “I’m not just sourcing these from the Internet. These are my illustrations, my drawings I’ve done.”  

The towels are her bestsellers, and she is particularly fond of her native plant line featuring images of purple coneflowers, royal catchflies and swamp milkweed. 

“Now I’m really looking around me and seeing what is blooming when,” Dominguez-Benner says. “[I’m] hoping to get that inspiration right as it’s happening.”

She  begins by sketching a miniature version of her design and then draws it full size on poster paper. She then puts a blank screen on top of the sketch, leaving a little space, and traces the design with blue drawing fluid. If she is using multiple colors, each hue gets its own screen. Once the fluid dries, she covers the piece with screen filler and sprays it with water. All the spots that had the drawing fluid rinse out, leaving bare screen so the ink can pass through. 

Although you can buy her towels and other products online, Dominguez-Benner loves meeting customers in the real world. She’s at Dayton’s Oakwood Farmers Market on Saturday mornings during the season, as well as at makers markets in Columbus and Cincinnati. (Look for her “misfits bin,” filled with items that didn’t quite pass quality assurance, heavily discounted at $5.)

“They can be hung up as art, or they’re actually a really useful thing,” Dominguez-Benner says of her towels. “It helps people get art into their everyday lives.”

For more information, visit racheldb.com.

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