About Me

My photo
I am a studio artist and textile designer. My work swirls around among art, design, and the joy of making things. I founded LFN Textiles Artists Ribbons in 2002, and have been designing these fairly wonderful ribbons for 8 years now. They are distributed for the wholesale market exclusively by Renaissance Ribbons, and are available at retail on my website, www.lfntextiles.com, and nationwide through fine fabric stores, gift shops. My tapestries are available through a number of galleries across the country as well. See the links section for contact information.

Friday, July 27, 2012

new photos by my girl

I have a 20 year old daughter -- nearly 21 -- who is (of course) fabulously talented and smart and beautiful.  From time to time I can actually persuade her to put some of her talent to use to help me in the studio.  Rose is a terrific photographer, and has a great camera, so she came in a couple of days ago to take new ribbon pix for me.  Here are the top picks of Rose's pix.  I love how she combines color and cropping: so different than what I would have done and hence, so refreshing!





 Funny thing is, she got here, pulled out her fancy camera, and found the battery was dead, 
so she took these with my little point-and-shoot.




all photos copyright Rose Nicholson, 2012.  
Ribbons copyright Laura Foster Nicholson, 2006-2012

Friday, July 20, 2012

LFN Textiles on Spoonflower 

I have been turning over in my mind how to use this blog, which I regard as my "design" blog.  My other life, of fine art, is described on my other blog, laurafosternicholson.  Somehow that is easier to write for: I like to describe my thought process, my art-related interests, my studio progress on various works.

I began lfntextiles to write about my ribbon designs and later added comments about my other commercial work for companies such as Renaissance Ribbons, Land of Nod, Crate & Barrel, and Monticello's shop.  I would like now to expand into the full creative process that happens in the design half of my studio (I have, at one end of my lovely large space, a room reserved solely for weaving; at the otherend is the room with the computer, the phone, the printers, the sewing and layout table: basically all of my other activities!).

Conservatory Bedding by LFN Textiles for Land of Nod, summer 2012
So today I will begin to tell you more about my own self-directed design work.  I have happily been playing with Spoonflower ever since they began 2-3 years ago.  In case you somehow don't know, Spoonflower is the first really successful consumer-based digital fabric printing service.  One can upload designs, maintain a public or private design library, order custom fabric on a variety of fabric types (all natural fibers!), order other people's designs, enter contests, and basically become part of a creative fabric-and-design oriented community.  The difference between this activity, and working for a client like Crate & Barrel, is, of course, free will.  I love designing items with my signature look for Crate, but as the designs become part of their catalogue they are applied to items of the company's choosing; they don't take everything I design (for some reason!) and I have to submit designs which are not only LFN but C&B in style.

Palampore Leslie by LFN Textiles, available at Spoonflower

 But -- being mainly an independent studio artist -- I like to have my own way once in a  while.  So I design my fabrics, sometimes get them printed, and sometimes offer the good ones for sale online at Spoonflower. I am gradually picking up a base of followers who "like" and even purchase fabric with my designs, for which Spoonflower pays me a very nice royalty.  Not a bad way to go!  And so I am beginning to take this aspect much more seriously as a potential public portfolio and income stream.

"Bahia" by LFN Textiles for Crate & Barrel, used on apron & oven mitt
The photos I have posted here detail some of the work I do and how it is transformed by application.  I made a design called Bahia a few years back, initially designed as a 2-color jacquard weave, then licensed to Crate & Barrel for kitchen accessories a while later.  I took the basic line design and colored it, showed it to Land of Nod, and they asked me if I could develop it into a Tree of Life pattern (the Indian Palampore) in girl colors.  To date it is the most complex pattern I have designed, and it translates wonderfully into other colors.  The "Leslie" version was colored for an interior designer to go with a specific room setting.  There are a few other colorways on Spoonflower as well.

"Bahia" in color by LFN Textiles, available at Spoonflower
I will continue to profile my designs here for a while: I have a lot of favorites ( usually the most recent ones of course!) so watch this space.

all designs copyright Laura Foster Nicholson, 2000-2012.  All rights reserved.