I’m being rather productive at the moment which is lovely. It means that I now have another set of block patterns to offer – a trouser block/sloper set for ages 2 to 14. These are for an easy fitting non-stretch trouser:

Next I plan to do the block patterns for children’s leggings and stretch fabric trousers, and then I’ll move onto ladies trousers.

I’ve also, alongside moving our belongings out of our flooded house, been trying to take part in the Spoonflower Design-a-Day Challenge. Spoonflower is a site where you can upload your own designs for fabric and have them printed. They quite often run competitions, and I do like to enter them every now and then for a little creative challenge.

On Day 1 of the Design-a-Day challenge, the theme was ‘pencil drawing’. Little Loop was at forest school that particular day, so I took inspiration from that and started sketching out some bugs:

I then tidied up the illustrations themselves by tracing over the best lines in pen:

I scanned them in, and began arranging the different elements into a pattern design. I coloured the design in photoshop, and this is the final outcome:

I was super pleased with this design and really happy I had taken part in this challenge as I probably wouldn’t have come up with something like this had I not had that little push to do something I don’t usually (but totally should!) do – work on PAPER first! I know from my graphic design uni course that this is always the best plan of action, but you just get so sucked into working on-screen that it falls out of habit. I shall give myself a talking to and make sure working on paper is at least a weekly occurrence from now on.

The next Design-a-Day challenge theme was watercolour. Handily, I had spotted the watercolour set Mr Loop had bought last year (and not used!) whilst packing our things up and kept it to one side. One evening, I popped out the watercolours and began painting some random things:

I scanned these in, and took just one of the elements and a bit of Photoshop editing to make this design:

which I’m also super happy with! I do have a lot more watercolour paintings I did to play with so I’ll be doing more on this theme for sure.

Now, by this point we were over a week into the daily challenge and I had only managed to do Day 1 and 2. I’m still to start:

Day 3 – Abstract
Day 4 – Block prints
Day 5 – Pen & ink
Day 6 – Geometric
Day 7 – Vector
Day 8 – Photographic
Day 9 – Open source
Day 10 – Steampunk
Day 11 – Dyed
Day 12 – Typographical
Day 13 – Kawaii
Day 14 – Found objects

so yeah, a LOT to do! I did actually make a start on the steampunk theme as it was something I felt drawn to, and did these little sketches:

I’m thinking of maybe combining these with the ‘pen & ink’ theme to make a nice looking design. I’m sure I’ll get something done on all the other themes eventually… it’s nice to have them there as inspiration for a little playing around.

The final contest (the challenge wasn’t a contest in itself) theme to come out of the Spoonflower Design-a-Day is ‘Watercolour’ from Day 2, so I’ll be spending the afternoon playing with and refining some of my watercolour pieces to hopefully make a winning-worthy entry! Wish me luck!