About a year ago the Pattern Anthology team (that’s us above: Melissa, Andrea, Kate and myself) got thinking about what we really wanted to do going forth. We really LOVE creating pattern collections, but with each one we get an itch to do something new and different as well. So we decided what would be really exciting would be to design fabric to go along with our patterns. We teamed up with Riley Blake Fabrics to make that a reality and this fall our very first fabric line comes out! (it can be pre-ordered now)
Our fabric line is Idle Wild and it includes a floral, a lace, a geometric, and the bird print. 4 designs, 3 color ways. All printed on amazing cozy knits.
We each designed our own fabric, while working together to make a cohesive feel and theme.
Since the 4 of us live all over the U.S. designing together can be challenging. We use google chat to have video conferences a few times a year (or more as needed) where we would bounce ideas off each other and share sketches and ideas. Planning a fabric line takes A LOT of time, and a ton of editing and decision making and re-working, and even completely scrapping ideas. Last fall all four of us were able to get together for the Houston Quilt market, which was fun to see, but most importantly we love any chance we can get to collaborate in person. So we all sat in a hotel and had a design session. I think we each came up with and shared at least 5 different designs to get the creative juices flowing. Then we all created a “mini collection” we each designed 3-4 prints that were our own taste and style, then we put them all together and selected one from each collection. It was fun to see how different we all are from each other, and how alike we all are, since once our collection was done I love each and every print and can’t wait to wear them all.
So which one is mine? We played a fun giveaway game on Instagram over the weekend, and let me just say while there were a lot of right answers there were a lot of wrong (but very valid) guesses…
I designed the birds. The theme for my mini collection was mixing geometric shapes and natural shapes. Also I pretty much hold firm to the “put a bird on it” motto in life in general, so yes if I see something at the store and it has a bird on it I almost always purchase it. (ok always) The original bird design was made up of 100’s of little hexagons, but since they are printed on a smaller scale, that detail was lost, so the genius that is Melissa smoothed him out, but the eye is still a cute little hexagon and I love the unexpected geometric shape. I could not love the final product any more and I can not wait to make everything out of this print.
Most exciting news of the whole fabric line is that it’s all KNITS!! Yes! High quality fantastic knit, with fun prints! We are also designing a fun collection of new knit patterns to go with our knits (due out early fall) but in the mean time we started dreaming of our old patterns.
