When I was in ninth grade I learned to sew. I grew up watching my mom sewing her own clothes and for special occasions our dresses. I have seven sisters and five brothers so sewing for us was only for special occasions. I am the tenth and I don't have many memories about my older sister's clothes but I do remember my dress, bag, and bonnet for my first-grade graduation (photo below) and the white dress with purple ribbons for my sixth-grade graduation.
I also watched three of my older sisters ( I am the fifth of the girls) sew their own clothes and they were very good at that. In ninth grade, I learned to sew and from the day I finished the class project, a basic pattern dress, I started to sew my own clothes. My mom didn't have to sew the dress for my ninth grade graduation, I did. I made two dresses, one for graduation and another for the Class day party. I still remember the pink fabric of that dress.
I love the memories of sewing with my sisters (four out of seven) and the satisfaction of the finished clothes, especially during Christmas time. On the day before Christmas Eve, we used to have a feast of sewing which was always a big mess with all of us sewing our nightgowns. I remember finishing at the last minute to be on time for church. Our church used to celebrate at night and long dresses were an established dress code. I have very fond memories of those days.
One of the things I liked most from my sewing experience was searching for the right fabric. I will never forget that while in high school when I was looking for a specific fabric design, my sister asked, "where did you see that fabric?", to which I responded, "it is in my mind". "I think you should study that", said my sister. .....What?? For me, it was something I never considered because I never thought that designing fabric was a real career. I only knew about medicine, law, teaching, and engineering. Those were my only options and I followed through on them - I got an engineering degree.
Life has its own way of surprising you. Very late in life, when I already had a career, a family, and even a grandson I met a lot of amazingly creative artists after reading the book from Kelly Rae Roberts. (You can read about that here.) I met most of them at the online course in the Summer of 2010.
Three of the resources in the e-course were related to pattern design and I immediately fell in love with it. Who could imagine? I have learned from the three of them after enrolling or buying PDFs courses from them.
The first lessons and where I started learning PhotoShop was with the marvelous Tara Reed whom I met later during the SURTEX Shows. I still go to her PDFs when in doubt. She is the most prolific artist in licensing I know.
I also enrolled in an e-course with the amazing Rachel Taylor. She has a great blog where you can find new courses.
The third teacher is the talented Jessica Swift whom I also met at SURTEX. She lives for pattern design and color (and now her son and daughter) and has a ton of fabric with her designs.
I learned from the three of them but I keep learning on a daily basis from different sources. I will write about that in the next post. I use my fabric mostly for pillow covers and sometimes for my clothes or my granddaughters' clothes. I still can't spend much time in this area which I love but each time I create a pattern, I am grateful and happy.
Never imagined that one day I would wear something where the fabric was designed by me and even less to sew bags with my designs. For me, it is a joy just to finish something and know that my design is on the fabric.
Below are some of my designs on a pillow cover, a blouse, and a bag. I love that each one was created with a different medium.
The first one was drawn and painted with India ink markers while watching the World Cup Soccer Game. I guess it was in 2015.
The second is a pattern made out of one of my collage paintings. I learned to transform art into a pattern with Jessica Swift.
The third is a pattern made with hand-drawn branches. I drew the branches with a sharpie and they transformed them in a digital image where I applied all the concepts learned with Tara Reed's PDFs to make a pattern.
In my Gallery, you can find more fabric designs. Each image has a link for my Spoonflower shop if you want to buy for your own project.
Spoonflower has been a wonderful tool to transfer my designs to fabric. I am just beginning to make some of them available for buying. Little by little I want to increase my fabric designs offer at the shop in Spoonflower. Stay tuned!!
There is still a Part IV of my Creative Journey because dreams and creativity never end. The next post about my journey will be about my love for illustration and my recently found addiction to Procreate and the IPad Pro. You can check my new Etsy Shop for printable products where I sell collage papers created digitally with Procreate here.
Have a blissful journey!
Elizabeth Claire
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You can buy the India Ink Markers I use to make the Flame Tree Flower here.
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