If you've been reading along you know that almost two years ago I decided to dust off my art skills and try to return to some freelance graphic work. I spent the majority of that year relearning and mastering Adobe Illustrator and becoming familiar with Photoshop and LightRoom. I was also determined to learn how to use my camera and do some simple video editing. At the end of that year I had not only dusted off my skills but had grown in my design capabilities. I began doing some custom graphics work - mainly logo and identity work. It was good to be working again, but I wanted to do something a bit more creative.

I had always wanted to learn to design fabric. As a little girl I would lay under my great grandmother's flour sack quilts and study all of their patterns. Before all the boys were born I used to follow designers like Kaffe Fassett and Susan Singer Sargent mainly because I couldn't get enough of their colors. I began drawing designs by hand with markers and exploring different ideas for collections, but I didn't know how to create the repeats. I did get access to a technical book via interlibrary loan but it was hard to learn just from a book - especially when I could only keep it for such a short period of time.

Then along came all of my boys, a couple of moves, and then the decision to homeschool and all of my art just got shoved in a box. Last year I dusted off that box and began pulling out all of my work. I discovered Creativebug and SkillShare and sites like Make It In Design and Make Art That Sells. In short, I found an entire community of artists with dreams just like mine. I saw many artists who are not only creating designs for fabric, but for a whole host of other products and markets.

I began taking every class I could and I learned multiple ways to create repeat patterns. But the patterns I made were a bit stiff and and I had no idea where to go with my style. One line from Bonnie Christine's Intro To Surface Pattern Design echoed in my mind - "That year I made hundreds of patterns." That seemed like a good solution - just make pattern after pattern and see where that would lead me. So sometime in December I decided that I would make 100 patterns. I began the project in a rather amorphous way and I didn't really have a way to keep track of and count my patterns.

So now I am attempting to keep track of each of my patterns on my website and be consistent to number them when I post them on FaceBook and Instagram. To meet this goal I am only counting technical repeats not 'surface designs' that don't repeat. It's going to take me a little time to format and catalog the images for all of the patterns I have done thus far but keep checking in and I'll post an update when it is current.