New Year's Questions

I am posting for the first time since last May.  When one has a public profile, even a small one like mine, one feels doubly guilty about not performing to standard.  But this blog, for me, has always been my "commercial" side, whereas the other blog I write, the eponymous one, has been used to muse about larger issues which may or may not be reflected in my fine artwork.

I am both a textile designer, and a fine artist.  The real me?  well, the role that feeds my soul is that of the artist.  The designer is in service to a market, designing products which one hopes will sell.  This involves market assessment, cooperation with clients, trend spotting -- or, more usually, trend-following, which is a lot less rewarding.

For me, design itself is a sense of play and freedom from the weightier issues that I attempt to address in my serious art work, but, because it involves partnering with larger companies and also must cater to the desires of the market for which these products are produced, the spontaneity and joy I experience while designing are tempered with a small sense of loss.

Has anyone else in the creative community spent the new year's period wondering how to hold off the forces of the market? of relentless self-promotion that is trumpeted as an absolute necessity for survival?  of the de rigeur practice of looking happy-faced for social media?  of having to engage daily with the happy face, in fact?  Facebook is telling me today that it has been 19 days since I last posted and that my fans want to hear from me!  sigh.  I want to think, and I don't want to worry about being forgotten while I take some quiet time.

As a result, I also neglect this blog.  I associate it more with having to trumpet my accomplishments, than with musing about my process.  I am currently re-working my website with a plan of taking it off the strictly storefront basis for ribbon, and using it to incorporate all aspects of my creative work, including a much-needed gallery of my artwork.  (I almost said portfolio!  a word which I associate with constantly seeking a job or approval.)  It will link these blogs, my etsy store for ribbon, my etsy store for household textiles, a portfolio (yes!) of design work, and a gallery of tapestries.

Retrospection is a necessary part of a well-lived life, and I hope that those of you who read this will take the time to comment here about your own struggles with an increasingly commercial world.  I wish you all a happy and truly creative new year.

Sewing my own prints

Spoonflower recently made a new fabric available which has changed my whole approach to dressing -- in that I finally can order my prints on a fabric substrate that makes sense for the way I dress.  They call it Modern Jersey, and it is a lightweight interlock knit made of polyester and lycra -- in other words, perfect for leggings!

Well, I haven't yet had someone snap a photo of me in my splashy leggings but here I am at our weekend art festival wearing the dress I made of the same fabric in my Sophie pattern.

here I am in Spoonflower's modern jersey, printed with my Sophie design.

LinkedIn and the price of design

It seems quite fashionable right now to say "I am not doing Facebook anymore."  Even more frequent: "I have no use for LinkedIn."

I won't get into Facebook here, but I have to say that I find LinkedIn quite worthwhile.  When I first joined, like many people, it was because I got a request from someone, and thought, "why not?".  Then my account sat idle for a very long time with a terse profile description and the odd connection being randomly added.

Then I found out about the groups, and it changed everything.  Depending upon your industry, there are hundreds of groups of people with similar interests who are chatting away about something or other that may have real relevance to things you think about every day.

I hasten to add, though it is referred to as a social network, I view LinkedIn as a network for making business connections.  So, I am a textile artist and designer, and I want to talk to other people involved in similar pursuits.  In particular, I would like to have more design clients, more design opportunities, so I have joined groups of people who are working toward similar goals and sharing information about them.

I belong to Textile Designers, Freelance Textile Designers,  The Art of Licensing, Design Sourcing, Jacquard Designing, sustainable Textiles, among others.  Some groups are quite active, others don't have much bearing on my interests and I really should kiss them goodbye.

This post was inspired by a discussion I read tonight in The Art of Licensing, a very active group of all kinds of licensing artists from illustrators to cartoonists to textile designers like me.  It was about pricing your work, a very dodgy issue, which people are quite secretive  about.  I can't tell you how hard it is to figure out what to charge, and you don't want to seem like an amateur and flat out ask, do you?  Every job is different , in some ways, and every job has a different value.  So, for those of you interested in such arcana, here is what I was referred to.  I hope it is as helpful for those of you who are designers, as it was for me. I am posting the direct link to the article which was discussed on LinkedIn.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3025992/how-much-should-you-charge-for-design-work-a-guide

new designs for Crate & Barrel

Petal pillow, Laura Foster Nicholson for Crate & Barrel

I always love it when my new designs come online.  Today I found that the trio of pillows I designed for Crate & Barrel for Spring 2014 are online.  They are fun!  Falling into the Suzani tradition, they are screen printed linen and then embellished with embroidery and crocheted flowers.  Love them!

Petal pillow, Laura Foster Nicholson for Crate & Barrel

Matilda pillow, Laura Foster Nicholson for Crate & Barrel

Matilda pillow, Laura Foster Nicholson for Crate & Barrel

Vinova pillow, Laura Foster Nicholson for Crate & Barrel

Houston International Quilt Market 2013

A week ago I was in Houston, Texas, finishing up 3 days of introducing my new collection of quilting weight fabrics, Lush Harvest, with Troy Corporation’s Riverwoods International brand.    A year ago I went down to the legendary trade show to spend time with Renaissance Ribbons, who manufacture and distribute my LFN Textiles Artist’s Ribbons line, and strolled around shopping for someone who could produce quilt weight fabrics with my designs.  Dorothy Troy stepped up to the job and was delighted to take on the new vegetable designs and text-based towels I had been working on, and now here they are!

That isn’t the real story here, though.  In order to gear up for this new market I have had to take a steep learning curve.  Being a textile and ribbon designer is not the same thing as being a designer of fabrics intended to be cut up and made into pieced items!  Some crossover is there, of course, but there is always the context of how the fabric to be used to be grappled with.  So instead of waiting demurely in my booth to speak with potential new customers, I kept venturing out to try to get a feel of what goes on here.

I took away a fantastic impression of intensive activity.  What a complex network of creativity goes into this business!  You have the people like me, who design repeat pattern.  You have the fabric companies who get that fabric manufactured and distributed to the retail shops (who come from all over the WORLD to buy).  You have the professional pattern designers who delight in contriving new ways to cut up and piece these various fabrics into sometimes traditional, sometimes modern, compositions.  You have the publishers, selling books and patterns to showcase the work of the pattern makers.  And you have to have very deep pockets and a genius for display to catch anyone’s eye in this hugely kaleidoscopic arena.

Herein I will simply post photos of some of the marvels I saw, starting with my own humble first effort.

Aardvark quilt patterns

Andover Fabrics

Blue Underground, quilt patterns and fabric line for Troy

Kaffe Fassett art quilt

Kaffe Fassett art quilt

Kaffe Fassett for Westminster

Kaffe Fassett for Westminster

Kaffe Fassett

Modern Quilt Studio patterns and books

Aardvark quilt patterns

Weeks Dye Works, hand dyed fibers & fabrics

Aardvark Quilt Patterns

Andover Fabrics

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Starry Night Hollow for Troy

Weeks Dye Works hand dyed threads

All Busy Gals Need a Good Apron

I have been wildly busy in the last 6 weeks doing all manner of short trips and miscellaneous, but not insignificant, studio projects.  Last weekend I went up to Chicago to the Troy Fabrics Fabriganza sale at their warehouse, to introduce my new Lush Harvest quilting fabric line to their loyal customers.  This week we are taking it on the road to the Houston International Quilt Market, and you should be able to find them at your local quilting shop not long afterward.

 

Last week was a flurry of sample making: my fabrics are mostly vegetable designs, and people tend not to want to use vegetable motifs on bedding, so I felt I needed to make some items that were for the kitchen using the new fabrics, and the coordinating new LFN ribbons from Renaissance Ribbons.

So here is a quickie set of snaps of yours truly modeling the aprons.  Please ignore the bad hair!

Kess In House Design

I have been having lots of fun lately with Kess In House design.  I have worked with them to design a number of great print-on-demand textiles.  That means you order what you want, they print it and ship it to you.  So my designs are available as shower curtains, pillows, tiles, blankets, bedspreads, pillows...  what I LOVE is the scale.  Seeing one of my designs blown up to the size of a bed or a shower curtain?  So much fun!  Here are a few examples:

 http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-surkhandarya

 http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-leeks 

 

http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-flower-garden-mosaic

 http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-leeks 

 

http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-flower-garden-mosaic

 

http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-samarkand

http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-multi-lacy

 http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-surkhandarya

 http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-flower-garden 

http://kessinhouse.com/collections/laura-nicholson-leeks

PS, all of these designs are also available as fabrics at Spoonflower.com

fabrics to come from LFN Textiles

Yesterday I signed an agreement with Troy Fabrics to have my designs produced as quilt weight fabrics in their Riverwoods collection.  Troy produced top quality fabrics with up to 16 screens per design for very subtle color gradations.  They are based in Chicago, and also distribute a number of other fabric lines.  There is something really comforting about working with a home-town company.

But what I am happiest about is that they love everything I do, and the first collection will be based on my recent vegetables group of designs and debut at Quilt market in October.  Here's a sample of what is to come:

 

 

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 I have always been stubborn about my artistic style and point of view, and I have been reluctant to design anything "for the market" if not also for myself. I like to do straightforward patterns but also love to do quirky ones.  Tomatoes was my very first ribbon design:  I thought it was really nice to contemplate a luxurious fabric like woven ribbon with images of kitchen vegetables.  it will be great to see Tomatoes, herbs, lettuces, green beans = a cornucopia of veg -- made up into tablecloths, but also quilts and maybe shirts too. 

We will be doing plenty of other subjects in upcoming collections, so watch this space.