Be the wind

Assignment: to design a border in Photoshop (i.e., a horizontally repeated pattern printed along the selvage edge of a bolt of fabric) Result: It should have been easy, but nothing worked till I resurrected a 2007 doodle — five off-balance little pencil figures. I put them on a colorful striped design, but continued to torture […]

Designing for energy

I’m focusing on fabric design this winter as a practice. Like some people play games or do sports, I design because it’s fun and has beneficial social and psychological side effects. I’m in it for the process, not the product. But, as always, I take myself seriously. Stretching does not mean scrambling to the top of […]

“Desert Wanderer”

My 13th Spoonflower Challenge entry is on the theme of Desert Modernism. The challenge is being held in conjunction with the Modern Phoenix organization. Personally, I was over mid-century modern by 1967, but undoubtedly desert modernism represents a classic era in Arizona architecture and interior design. I thought my best route to success here was […]

Reckoning: a humble start

You hear about artists and entertainers “bursting upon the scene” as if they just picked up a brush or a guitar and their genius gushed out. You want to be that person. You walk on stage unrehearsed because you’re confident the magic will happen. Haha. I started doing Spoonflower challenges because, if I want to […]

Garden party at sunset

Spoonflower challenge: a design limited to four specific colors — Goldenrod (#E0B138), Midnight Blue (#002E54), Coral (#FA7268 – ASE Color of the Year hex code), Gray (#D9D9D6). My reaction: ew. Oh well. I pulled a motif from my library and gave her a mysterious friend: opposite but the same. A bird looks on. Others designers […]

Good old Lucy

When I fell in love with making videos (circa 2003), I was a one-woman production studio — writer, actor, sound engineer, animator. I committed to telling some stories from a youthful point of view, so I learned how to modify my voice recording to make it sound like I was 12. Lucy was born. She […]

Old dogs, new tricks

Question: Who do I think I am signing up for courses at the Textile Design Lab, among all those young and talented graphic designers? [Continuing from Jan 12, 2019] Well, why do old people sign up for marathons, knowing they will never break out of the pack to win a race, not even “for their […]

My Fabric Design Saga

2014. I was all-in on textiles, dyeing, and stitching. Somewhere I heard about Spoonflower (print-on-demand DIY fabric) and (looking at piles of sketches and years of studying Photoshop and Illustrator) thought I can do that! And, yes, I could. Lookout for Attitude in four colorways sprang forth. But then I was seduced by the vibrance […]

Dragon Feathers

[Cont’d from 6 Jan] I kept tinkering with my feather print. Too abstract gave me a vivid design with no hint of feathers; ultra-realistic seemed too busy. I settled for the more realistic rendering at a large scale. No final word on the source of the feathers, so I’m saying “baby dragon.” Getting patterns to […]

“Love Potion” Design

I promised to do a fabric design every week in order to really learn the craft. This includes as many Spoonflower challenges as possible. But yikes, the Valentine challenge was due today. Whipping up an effective repeating pattern is no small matter. Hmm, maybe I could use my little wine glass sketch — it has […]