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.

Radiant Orchid 2012

I was going through my vast number of uploaded designs yesterday at Spoonflower, the online print-on-demand fabric service (Spoonflower has a great option in that you can offer your own designs for sale and receive a nice commission whenever someone else buys fabric printed with one of your designs).

 All designs copyright Laura Foster Nicholson 2012-2014.  All rights reserved.

I did a big collection in a colorway I called Plum in 2012, and as I came across it yesterday I realized there it was! Radiant Orchid!  I have written about this rather curious color a couple of times already, commenting on how "outside" the norm it seemed to me, and yet here I had used it with a generous hand in a design collection 2 years ago.  OK, proof that color trending is indeed insightful.

I wonder how many of you have had this color creep into your wardrobe or your home or your creative work in the past couple of years? Yes, that is how a trend is spotted.  Most of us unconscious of it until it reaches a critical mass, and someone like Faith Popcorn or Pantone points it out and shout, "AHA!"

From ribbon to voile! thanks to Spoonflower

As a textile designer, I often license my designs across several formats -- ribbon, fabric, dinnerware.  Usually it is me doing the legwork to find the clients for licensing, but I had a very pleasant surprise last fall.  I have a very large portfolio of fabric designs on Spoonflower, and the occasional sale of my designs through that is gratifying.  Some of the patterns I post on Spoonflower are based on ribbons I have designed.
 

Here is my design from several years ago for my Dahlia Ribbon.  I love it: it is heavy satin with very beautifully articulated details in the weaves. I redesigned it into an allover pattern and uploaded it to Spoonflower,. 

Last fall I got a message from a clothing designer who wanted to order yardage for sampling, and if the samples showed well at the January trade shows, he would want a license so that he could produce it in quantity.  He chose to print on cotton voile, which is a nice summery choice.  For this I earned my designer commission form Spoonflower.

This week he sent me photos of the samples, and indicated they were going ahead with production!  So the license was executed, the fee paid, and ahead we go.  As these shirts are not on the market yet, I can't link to them for you, but it sure was exciting!  As my designs are usually licensed for Home Dec, it is fun to see them as clothing.  Thank you, Spoonflower!

 

Spoonflower branches out into wallpaper!

Wow! Spoonflower has branched out into print-on-demand wallpaper.  I am busy updating some of my patterns which I would find appropriate for wallpaper and adding that option.  They have a nice feature which shows the design mocked up with a chair for scale:

Sunflower by LFNTextiles

Palampore Leslie wallpaper

I never cease having fun with Spoonflower.  What a great resource!

LFN Textiles on Spoonflower

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.

new thoughts

How funny that one seems to need to start a new post with the adjective "new".  Especially when the last post was very, very long ago (even though it also had "new" in the title). 

There has been a hiatus here, I admit.  I had gotten dissatisfied with my approach to writing on this blog -- which I view as my design blog --  vs. my art blog,  http://laurafosternicholson.com, which has een devoted to the more personal -- less commercial? -- activity of making artwork and musing about it.

I lecture to art schools and conferences about the relationship between art, craft & design in my work, yet I have separated these into two blogs and an etsy site.  Now I am re-thinking the role of design in my creative life -- as I am doing so much of it!  I often thought it was the fun, rather thoughtless side of my work -- decorative, patterned, fun, carefree.  Certainly my commercial clients need it to be that way, but I have been considering design as a more tightly conceptual aspect of my artwork lately.  Spoonflower still intrigues me, in that it makes very accessible relatively inexpensive prints of my ideas on fabrics with which I might make items that could be thoughtful as well as decorative.

Recently I decided to start to try to express some of my more basic ideas about ecologically responsible living in useful textiles; I have been experimenting with silkscreening on towels and handkerchiefs and trying to use imagery which is inspired and fairly clear in its meaning.  Such as, "Here is a cloth napkin as an alternative to something you might throw away.  And it is nice, so you will want to have it!"  I hope to create a series this spring of household textiles, when I decide how I want to portray my messages.

I designed 3 different towels so far for Spoonflower: one speaks of the importance of trees and the other two about the delight of eating fresh, local produce.

They are available now for sale through Spoonflower -- you will have to hem them yourself: one yard of 54" fabric yields 4 towels -- or soon, on my etsy site.

You see, already I am writing more about ideas and less about "product"!

all images and designs copyright Laura Foster Nicholson, 2011.

new dishtowels for Crate & Barrel

Seems a little early for fall -- it is still in the 90's every day! -- but Crate & Barrel has posted the new fall dishtowels by LFN Textiles.  Both are cotton prints in saturated colors.  Autumn Squash is the same design that won a Spoonflower fabric contest last fall (so you can buy yardage of it there if you like!), a great design of heirloom pumpkins and gourds.  Acorns is sprays of (still green!) oak leaves with little embroidered acorns.  Cute!

Spoonflower and LFN

I was recently invited by Leesa Hubbell of Surface Design Association -- she edits the Newsblog -- to write about my experiences in designing for Spoonflower, the online fabric print-on-demand service.  The article went live today, so do check it out!   Leesa will be chairing a panel that I will pariticpate on, along with Dawn Zero Erickson, Mary Jaeger, and Janelle Torrence   at the 2011 SDA Conference in Minneapolis June 4-17.

Spoonflower Conquest!

I have been entering Spoonflower's Fabric of the Week contests occasionally when the theme matches something in my portfolio. Last week I was surprised and delighted to find out that I had won the Gourd contest!  My prize: $100 worth of Spoonflower fabric, so I was able to print out a number of designs in my portfolio.  As you might imagine I design far more than I can afford to print -- so this is a great boon to me.  I think I will make aprons out of my fabrics, there seems to be a demand for them at our New Harmony Coffee House & General Store.  It is so lovely to be selected from a field of talented peers, and to be chosen by peers.  Thanks, Spoonflower!

October!

Yikes, a month since posting!  any day now the mail will bring me the new Beets ribbon and I will need to get it online for you: here is a peek now.

Also, I have another design in a Spoonflower contest for gourd fabrics, my heirloom pumpkins. (if you want to vote for me, it is #60!)

 

http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/lfntextiles

This week I am off to Lincoln, Nebraska to sell ribbon at the Textile Society of America conference -- looking forward to meeting a fascinating group of people.  More to come!

spoonflower contests

I do have fun entering Spoonflower's themed fabric design contests.  Recently I have entered 3 contests, and you can look for my designs -- and vote for them! -- here.  And if you are so inclined, you may look at a number of designs I have made available for public view and purchase by searching Spoonflower for lfntextiles.
Here is my entry for Surrealist Fruit, closing tomorrow.  An earlier incarnation of this design was used a couple of years ago on an apron & mitt set from Crate & Barrel.

 Upcoming contests I have entered:

Windows & Doors (next week)

Tractors

Kindly remember that all content, images and text, on this blog is copyright Laura Foster Nicholson.

greening up

It is funny to post irregularly and go from snow to green in this short physical space! I have entered Spoonflower's contest again, with my design Everything for the Garden. This was originally designed when I was learning jacquard design at Philadelphia U's Artist Jacquard Project (coordinated by Bhakti Ziek)in the mid-90s.
My kids were tiny and I incorporated their drawings into the design -- William at the age of 9 was an expert at drawing skeletons, and Rose at 4 made me a many-legged centipede (or caterpillar?). This design was woven in a 2-weft damask weave wit ha wonderful yellow space-dyed thread as ground, on top of basic black & white.

I took the original design drawing and revised it for print for the Spoonflower contest. Not bad!

If you like it please vote for it by scrolling through all the entries and clicking on mine. Thanks!

snow!?

Here I am trying to focus on spring -- and it is colder than usual here, though the snow has all melted -- and now Spoonflower - the online fqabric printing service -- has to remind us of the weather. Their weekly fabric design contest is here and the subject is snow: I entered my starburst design because it is plenty snowy enough for me! I adore just about everything I design when I first do it, (then slowly reality sets in and Iget more critical!), but at the moment I sure love this design and if you do too, help me out by voting for it please, this week only.

(this design, and all others you see on my blog, are copyright Laura Foster Nicholson)