Tools For Designing Fabric

Hi everyone!

Today, I want to talk about some of the tools I use when I design fabric.

1.  Pinterest
First tool I always use is Pinterest. Pinterest is an awesome place to find possible color schemes and art styles you may want to use in your design. It's typically where I start, and I make a board for each design collection idea I have. So I have an Anne of Green Gables board and a Peter Pan board to save color schemes, quotes, and artwork that I can refer back to.

2.  Pencil and Paper
Drawing by hand is the best place to start. Personally, I feel like I have more control drawing first with paper and pencil and then tracing it later digitally.

3.  SketchbookPro App
My personal favorite is the SketchbookPro App for my iPad. I do all of my script patterns on SketchbookPro because it's easy to rotate my iPad. It's easy to upload designs on the go from the app. Also, the SketchbookPro app includes the Copic marker colors, which have turned out nicely on my designs. Cons to the SketchbookPro App is that it has only preset sizings and minimum layering. Also, it takes up a big chunk of my iPad storage.

4.  Adobe Photoshop
Perhaps the mother of all tools is Adobe Photoshop. It has a pen tool that makes it easy to trace over my drawings and a grid so it's easier to make even stripes and repeating patterns.

What about you? What are some of your favorite design tools? Leave me a comment below.

-Lauren

Finding a Source of Inspiration

Hi everyone!

Finding inspiration is always the first step when designing a fabric collection. Like I said previously, my inspiration often comes from what I read. Why? Well, a story contains everything from people to places, and their descriptions are wildly fun to pull from. Let's take Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and brainstorm some possibilities. 

The first thing I like to do is list characters. We have the curious protagonist Alice, the Mad Hatter, the March O'Hare, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts, Bill the Lizard, and the twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum--as well as several others. When designing my collection, I also listed characters from the sequel Through the Looking Glass. I took my list and created this design by just writing their names and adding some doodles of them.

The characters themselves can also inspire designs. The Mad Hatter, for example, wears a crazy hat, but also, his name implies that he creates crazy hats. I took that idea to create this design:

Also, Tweedledee and Tweedledum inspired this simple design:

The Queen of Hearts inspired this design:

Events in the story can also inspire designs. The most famous event in Alice in Wonderland is the Mad Tea Party. Food in general plays an important role in the story, so I decided to include a "Drink Me" vial and some "Eat Me" biscuits in this design:

Another well-known event is when the cards paint white roses red. That event inspired this design:

Carroll's rich storytelling and poetry provides tons of inspiration. I still have some design ideas I just haven't gotten around to drawing from Alice in Wonderland. You can find all these designs and more at my Spoonflower shop.

That's all for now.

-Lauren

Finding Design Inspiration from Novels

Hello!

My name's Lauren, and I am a huge reader, thanks to my mother who read aloud to me all the time. I also happen to be an amateur fabric designer on Spoonflower, and my reading selections have influenced what I focus on in my designs. I decided to start this blog as a way to share my design inspiration.

My primary source of inspiration comes from my favorite classic novels. I decided about a year ago I wanted to create a fabric collection that focused on one of my all-time favorite classic children's book Alice In Wonderland, and since then, I've also worked on an Anne of Green Gables collection and a Peter Pan one.

I hope that this blog will not only allow me to share my inspiration with you but also for you to share your novel ideas with me. Leave comments on the posts to recommend new color schemes, books, or patterns! I'd love to hear from you.

-Lauren