Over the next two weeks we will be featuring a few of the collections developed during Mastering Your Market, one of our textile design courses. In this six week workshop designers focus on the apparel, quilting and home decor markets, producing a small collection of patterns for different companies in each market. Designers can choose from several brief options, finding the ideal customer match for their style, so you’ll be seeing a large variety of work over the next few weeks.
We’ll start with Cathy Hunt, who was kind enough to share her process for each collection and her thoughts on the workshop here:
“There were so many things in the course that brought me to the next level. If I had to choose one thing, I would say that the greatest value to this course is the industry information. The in-depth look at three different industries, apparel, home decor and quilting was VERY helpful. I discovered that I was able to really focus on the needs of each buyerand their customer. This actually gave me the freedom to stretch my creativity further and create more than just “pretty prints”.
In the end, I feel I developed collections that were more unique and “marketable”.
Having my work reviewed by the industry experts was invaluable feedback! I was able to use their comments to revise and improve my work. I enjoyed the entire process and came out of it with three collections for which I have already received some interest!”
Collection #1, Aspen
I loved creating this collection for Pendelton. I drew my inspiration from the fact that Pendelton’s customer appreciates a Native American look in their products. I was inspired to bring an unexpected twist to the designs by creating a contemporary tribal feel to the collection.
Collection #2, Hazy Kat
I designed this collection for the quilting market. My inspiration came from studying folk art designs. I was searching for a way to create that simplicity of shape in a hand-painted technique and then, digitally, give it a complexity with the blurry, hazy effect. I hand-painted the elements and created a hazy background or blurred the lines in some way on each print.
Collection #3, Westminster
This collection was a challenge as I had never designed for bedding before. I had a vision to create some simple, oversized geos with a medieval feel to them. I wanted to contrast this strong graphic feel with bold, watercolor flowers. I believe my customer would be drawn to the traditional facet of the design, but at the same time be inspired by the freshness of the florals. I wanted to give her something in her comfort zone that she could also be excited about. I loved pulling this together. I created the geos in illustrator, then brought them into photoshop to merge the flowers. Working in such a large scale, and indexing the color, was challenging, but I learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence. Bedding is an area I am very interested in, so this was great learning for me.
You can learn more about Cathy’s work here and register here for the textile design course: Mastering Your Market!
At Pattern Observer we strive to help you grow your textile design business through our informative articles, interviews, tutorials, workshops and our private design community, The Textile Design Lab.
