Patterns of thought

Turns out I suck at making patterns. I also suck at thinking of patterns to make, and I suck at drawing my own patterns from scratch.

Told ya. The flower thingy is OK, but what the F*? I can’t even explain the large poop looking shape in the corner. Second try will be better … right?

To explain: Yesterday I was playing in Illustrator making patterns and having a hard time aligning shapes so they looked right. So, I found this great tutorial that shows Creating Seamless Patterns in Illustrator (the website is pretty cute too!). I tried it out and you can see my first attempt above.

I have been spending a lot of time on Etsy.com and since many designers screen print their own fabric designs and then sell them by the yard, I thought trying a pattern out for myself would be fun. Turns out designing a pattern is not as easy as it sounds. I tried many different designs before settling with the green one above, and something still doesn’t look right to me.

There’s so many cool references for those of you who like patterns (Lisa, I still have your snowflakes! You might see a pattern with them soon!). This woman in particular draws out her design on graph paper first and then scans them and re-traces them in Illustrator. See her whole design process here.

Check out some of Etsy’s best textile designers here.

And … my personal favorite Daisy Janie. See her Etsy store.