My First Fabric Collection: Final Project
This is the fifth post in the series My First Fabric Collection. Get started with post number one: Why Immersion in 2024?
Creating a Collection
When I started Immersion at the end of February, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going to end up once I completed the course in May. As I started to develop my artwork, learned Illustrator, and began experimenting with pattern making, I became more confident that I could walk away from the course with a finalized collection, something I did not even consider a possibility in February. As Bonnie teaches it:
A collection is simply a set of patterns based on a common theme or story. Anything between 8-12 patterns that coordinate is called a collection. Anything less than that, we call a mini-collection.
After creating 30+ patterns as part of my practice, a mini-collection seemed very doable, so I decided that a full collection would be the appropriate challenge for how I was feeling. A collection also needs to be balanced. Usually they are made up of Hero, Coordinate, and Blender patterns.
Hero patterns are the most complex and often use your more complex and detailed motifs. They are also often your patterns that use the most colors.
Coordinates can still be complicated and use multiple motifs, but they shouldn’t compete with the Hero patterns.
Blenders are the simplest patterns, often using your simplest motifs and are often your patterns that use the fewest colors, sometimes only two!
Hero print: Tread Collection
Coordinate Print: Tread Collection
I struggled with figuring out which of my patterns fit into which category. For me the Coordinates and the Blenders were the easiest patterns to create. I struggled with creating the Heroes. I couldn’t figure out what made a pattern complex enough. This is also where I realized how only 50 motifs could be limiting when you do not want to repeat any of your motifs from pattern to pattern. During this time, there was a lot of trial and error and going back and forth between ideas and designs. It was also challenging because (surprise) I’m still learning Illustrator, so I would often know that I had learned how to do a particular technique, but would need to go and find the video to remember how to actually execute what I wanted to do. Thank goodness for my study group and their encouragement, because there were many evenings where I felt like I was going cross eyed from manipulating a pattern every which way only to decide it was better before I started messing with it. But I stuck with it, creating dozens of different iterations of my pattern ideas.
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Final Color Palette
As I went, I kept a document with all of the patterns I thought could make the final cut, finally settling on nine that I believed were the best of the best. As my final patterns began to solidify, I also needed to make decisions regarding color and scale. My original color palette was a great starting point, but as I started to finalize my patterns I needed a color palette that would work for all of the patterns. It needed to have enough colors to provide enough contrast and depth across the entire collection, but I still wanted it to be a simple palette with limited colors. My final palette included nine colors: cream, gold, a sage green, a teal green, a dark almost black blue, a lavender, dark lavender, a light purple, and a dark almost black purple. With those colors finalized, I went back and recolored all of my patterns so that they included only those colors. I also had to choose the right balance of colors across patterns so that they were in harmony together. For example, you didn’t want to look at all of the patterns and just see a wave of green. I wanted blues and purples to be the dominant colors with the cream, gold, and greens providing contrast.
Final color palette for Tread fabric collection.
Scale
Once the colors were finalized, I needed to decide what scale each pattern should be. Just like you want your patterns to vary in their complexity you want the size to vary as well. I wanted my Hero prints to be at the largest scale with my blenders being at the smallest scale. This was again a lot of trial and error and seeing how the patterns would look together as a group. Once everything seemed to look good on my computer, it was time to see what they would look like in real life. So I printed sample patterns out on white computer paper. While the colors were totally off because I was using a laser printer, this was a really important exercise for determining the scale. You can look at your computer, and the rulers you set up in Illustrator, and your ruler at your desk, but it does not compare to holding them at 100% the size in your hands. With these printouts I made some final adjustments to the scale and decided to call it done.
Small scale.
Large scale.
Finishing Touches
Alas there was still work to be done! Bonnie taught us that our collection should also tell a story and three ways to help tell that story are through the collection's title, logo, and description. The title came to me early on in my final project: Tread. It was one of the first titles that I considered and I never moved away from it. I loved how that one word could mean the physical tread of a tire but also convey a sense of movement. I hope people think of movement when they look at my collection. Using my twenty original words exercise and playing with the idea of movement and progress, my collection description became:
Tread
A celebration of the roads we travel and the marks we leave behind.
Finally I needed a logo. I took some of my favorite motifs from my patterns and used them to enhance the basic text layout of the word Tread. With that my first fabric collection was complete, at least on paper.
Final patterns and color palette for Tread collection.
While I found Bonnie’s course to be invaluable for learning everything related to Illustrator and pattern-making, she also tried to set up students for financial success. The whole last module of her course was specifically dedicated to creative entrepreneurship and at a basic level taught us ways to create income from your work. Specifically she wanted participants to try and make back their investment in the course using their final project to do it. So my next step, with completed patterns in hand, was to explore the world of print on demand fabric and specifically setting up my patterns to be for sale on Spoonflower.
Next on the Blog: Prepping my Collection for Spoonflower
Introducing: TREAD
Hey you! Can’t wait to get to the end of this six part series? My first fabric collection: Tread is available now on Spoonflower. One FREE way that you can support me is by favoriting those patterns that you like.
TREAD is a collection that celebrates the roads we travel and the marks we leave behind. This collection is inspired by historic automobiles, vintage fashion, and art deco designs.