..............................................

..............................................

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Consider The Hedgehog

'Hedgehog Tea' copyright WDeWitt.


Funny thing happened to me on my journey to world domination in the field of watercolor and colored pencil work.

I stumbled into a specialty custom fabric site called Spoonflower.  I was fascinated by the possibility of creating my own design on fabric. After all, I had sewn and quilted all my life.  And drawn and painted longer than that.  Art and fabric, that is a perfect duo to me.

I drew very early. Picture a preschooler taking white shoe polish, the kind that had a felt dauber in the lid, and painting a mural on the walls of my closet. No doubt I had also ended up with white paint dots on my clothes in that closet. Luckily for me my mother was a painter and simply gave me art supplies in exchange for my shoe polish bottle.

I was amazed by what Spoonflower had to offer. I started reading every thing I could about fabric patterns and the mechanics of creating a seamless repeat. The first designs of mine were obviously at the kindergarten level of skill. I totally avoided the repeat problem by taking motifs of my animal art and isolating them on a solid background.  :)


After a few of these simple patterns, I was reading everything about this seamless repeat business. Yes, I could find instruction online. But there were more than a couple of diverse methods. And some of them were confusing to me. Ok most.  

So I figured out a method that worked for me and I dipped my toe in a higher skill set.   I put together a scattered non-directional design of hedgehogs and pinecones.   It was in a limited color palette. Spoonflower challenges are set weekly for fabric designers, and even after a couple of years I find the limited palette more difficult. Hex codes are given and the artist has no wiggle room for shading.


Hedgehogs & Pinecones copyright WDeWitt

With over a hundred entries I place 10th. I was jazzed.  And I haven't stopped yet. 

The voting for the challenge this week is going on now and my entry is called 'Lobster and Crab Bisque' in blue. The theme is 'The Great Barrier Reef".



Throw a vote for me this way if you like what  I've done. But more than that, if you are an artist that has never considered your art on fabric go visit Spoonflower and browse around .It might be something for you.





4 comments:

  1. love your fabric designs and will go vote! congrats on that hedgehog placing! I so adore designing the fabric :o) wish i were independently wealthy so that is all i did! LOL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks so much Julie. Designing the fabric is fun isn't it?

      Delete
  2. Love this post, Golders! I definitely want to do something with Spoonflower this year...will go vote, as well!
    :) Anne

    ReplyDelete