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Surface Design


 Hey guys!

I think I finally realized that I love surface design. I never would have guessed this would be something I would get so excited about.

I know it's been a minute, but I am finalizing my swatches for releasing a bunch of fabric designs at once. I don't know if I can really call it a "collection" since they all look a bit different in ways from each other, but they all came from me.



I am using the same process as I had posted about on this blog sometime in 2015.

All of my prints are hand-drawn and then thrown into Photoshop. Sometimes I color them in Photoshop, other times I color them with watercolor pencils and then throw them in for a repeat.

(Excuse the low-resolution, by the way. The actual prints are in 150 dpi and very crisp.)


For this leaves one, I hand-repeated in real life using a quadrant method. I scanned the step before cutting and then filling in white space, and then hand-filled the white space. Whatever I filled in white-space-wise I then traced and made a separate file for. I then scanned that in and used what I drew to fill in the white space on the Photoshop file. It sounds more complicated than it needs to be (maybe it is) but it's the only way I could get it to work and not have to erase a bunch of annoying lines.

So far, this is my favorite print!


Other times, I draw out motifs and then find a way to arrange them later, such as the following ones.



And then I imagine them on a garment....





And then other times, I just draw and end up with something that I color in with watercolor pencils and then scan in, figuring out a repeat afterwards.



I don't know what it is, but there is just a bunch of magic in this all for me. It's relaxing to just doodle and color and then play with color, layout, contrast, etc. It's relatively quick, has some technical skill involved but not too much, and then anyone can make a garment from it once it's proofed and ready on Spoonflower!

I am totally having the best time with this so far!

There still are plans to eventually release PDF sewing patterns (who knows when) and I still am very sewing/design oriented but this right now is bringing me the most joy in design.

Hopefully you too will love to make something soon with these prints!

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