pond_ripple's Fabric Blog

Design-A-Day SpoonChallenge Day 6: Geometric Today's Design-A-Day SpoonChallenge prompt comes from Spoonflower friend and neighbor,  Nadia Hassan . Nadia walks us through her process for creating vibrant geometric designs that are both angular and inviting, abstract and natural.  Designs from left:  Stone Soup  |  Mod Mosaic  |  Fetching Fletching Nadia : From classic polka dots to arabesque mosaics of staggering complexity, geometrics are arguably the most diverse and versatile category of prints. They can be simple or extravagant, precise or imperfect, subtle or bold, and anyone can create a geometric design, regardless of skill level. They appear in just about every conceivable product market, are suitable for all ages and genders, and can be tailored for formal or casual settings. I think of them as the workhorses of the pattern design world.  When I first began creating repeating patterns, I gravitated toward geometr...

Today's #SFDesignADay is  pen and ink ! Lucie Duclos (known as  Snowflower  in the Spoonflower Marketplace ) will show you all you need to know to delve into this rewarding design process. Be sure to follow along on the  blog  and in your inbox until March 15 as we feature a new Design-A-Day technique, presented to you by members of our talented community of designers! Lucie:  Pen and ink drawing is a line based method of creating images. Subtle variations in style and line quality can range from whimsical and clever illustrations to super realistic drawings. There is an endless amount of pen and ink techniques, but I prefer the basic black and white line drawings because you can create strong graphics with a clean, modern look. And you can always add color at the end and still keep the black outline for definition! Lucie:  Let’s start by picking a theme, let’s say “leaves” for example. First, I li...

Today's #SFDesignADay is  block prints ! Rochelle New (known as  Rochelle_new  in the  Spoonflower Marketplace ) will show you all you need to know to delve into this rewarding design process. Be sure to follow along on the  blog  and in your inbox until March 15 as we feature a new Design-A-Day technique, presented to you by members of our talented community of designers! Rochelle:  If you love bold shapes, simple color schemes, and a handcrafted look, then Block Printing is definitely for you. It's also a great choice for budding designers who don't have editing programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. You can carve your design, print it, scan it into the computer, and then decide on your design layout and color scheme with Spoonflower's own editing tools. The option to step away from my laptop and add a more handcrafted element to my work is really what drew me to block printing in the first place. If you'...

I finished my Cantaloupe Vineyard quilt and I am so excited to be able to show it off! It was a long process, mostly due to me purchasing each of the 3 yards of the quilt top separately to keep within my budget. There was also an issue of some of my batting getting lost in transit over the holiday mail rush. I literally didn't get my last yard of batting until the beginning of February. The center panel is my  1 Yard Cantaloupe Quilt Block  with a yard of my  Richard & Regelwyn Portrait fabric split into two sections on the top and bottom. (If you wanted to do a similar quilt without my cats you can use Vineyard Quilt Tiles fabric instead.) The sides are a design made specially for this,  Cantaloupe Quilt Frame , that also uses a yard of fabric.  This is the finished quilt top. The cats were quilted around just like all the other elements to make them look slightly 3D! A photo from the side. I had to stand on a chair for this shot, and th...

A new project that I have been designing like crazy for is my Cantaloupe Vineyard cheater quilt. When finished it should be a little under 6' long, and a little over 5' 3" wide. Now obviously it's not quite as big of an undertaking as a true patchwork quilt, but it is a large enough project that it's getting spread out over a couple of months. This is an approximation of what the finished quilt should look like: Of course things change from the concept to the execution, and even that has changed over time. This quilt started out as a 1 Yard Cantaloupe Quilt Block that I had designed to show off the Cantaloupe Vineyard fabrics side by side.There wasn't much of a plan when I ordered the yard from Spoonflower and got a cheap yard of teal cotton elsewhere to back it. After simply layering it with batting , sewing around the edges, and turning it right side out, it was quilted. At first I thought it would be finished and that I would take a few photo...