A lot of people are curious how I managed to pull off my own collection of custom block prints... honestly I'm surprised I pulled it off as well! There was a million little back and forth design decisions and communications that took place between me and the vendor in India to make this happen.
So far I have the Picnic prints which is a mashup between a large quilt design and gingham and I just launched the Juicy prints which feature an allover strawberry print.
Sooo I originally decided to do block prints first rather than digital prints on fabric because I honestly didn't know how to do digital design... until now. After the success of the Picnic Prints, I finally felt brave enough to order a used iPad online from FreeGeek (a technology recycling nonprofit from Portland!) on Ebay. So now I'm finally teaching myself how to make digital prints and repeats etc but this is all very recent... I started the Picnic Prints with just a pen and paper and sent my sketches to the printing team in India. I don't have much time to design during the day with running the shop so I do most of my sketching at night when my toddler is sleeping.
So you can imagine how proud I am of my custom fabric collection! I have been literally dreaming about designing fabric since... idk 2016-2017 ish? It's been a while. I have always been an artist and I was leafing through my notebook of watercolor art on the streetcar in Portland and had this vision of this abstract floral painting as a duvet cover... seeing my art in a tangible soft object seemed so alluring and magical. I wasn't a sewist at the time... or even really a designer, I was still in my nonprofit professional era and I was posting my art online under the name @artjournalkitten and had a good following going but couldn't figure out the next steps. Digitizing my art has been a mental roadblock for quite a few years so I'm proud that I'm finally pushing myself to get past that. You can expect to see digital prints on wovens and knits coming out from me in the next 6 months to a year. I'm slowly building my print collection of digital prints.
I'm so proud of this stack of beauty! And I really admire and respect the artisan team in India who brought these visions to life - this is really a collaboration between me and them.
This was one of my first digital designs - this became the block for the Juicy print series. Luckily I've spent so much of my life drawing and painting so I got past my mental roadblock with digital design and have been able to jump right in!
This was my first make with my prints - this is the Skipper Dress by Matchy Matchy Sewing Club and I used Picnic Print in Sailor Blue which was the first to sell out in the first batch of prints I released.
Recently I was able to mash up two colorways of my Juicy Print in the Earl Grey and Cobalt colors in this delightful Sauvie Dress by SewHouse7. I'm really proud of this one! I love how my prints can be mixed and matched and I love the rustic handmade quality of the block printing.
I'm always working on cooking up new prints so be sure to tell me if there is anything you want to see! I'm working on a blueberry print, lots of vintage-quilt inspired prints, and more... Let me know if you have any ideas for me.