I've been experimenting on and off with different ways of creating visual textures for art quilt backgrounds. I've tried felting, confetti quilting (great for using up tiny fabric scraps), painting but this week I've been playing around with digital images which I could fabric print at home, or turn into a print on demand dressmaking fabric.
The vernal equinox occurred on Saturday (20th March 2021). At an equinox the sun appears directly over the equator and day and night are the same length. In the spring the equinox marks the start of lengthening days and the promise of better weather. Blue skies and green shoots appearing on the twiglike hedges put me in the mood for a plant inspired print. I thought of the Versace dress made famous by Jennifer Lopez (among others) and got distracted away from art quilts to dressmaking fabrics.
I first dabbled with print on demand fabric a few years back when I was invited to a wedding loosely themed on the TV show, Doctor Who. For the pattern to repeat properly over the width and length of the fabric it is essential to either design a full width image or to create a repeatable, tessellating image. For the wedding outfit I created a full width image with a repeat along the length of the fabric. If you study the top and bottom of the image you can see where the repeat starts again. Trying to recall the lessons I learned back then I set about designing a new spring fabric. But first to find some inspiration.
With lockdown still ongoing my first thought was to use images of spring flowers from the garden, but I wasn't sure I wanted to look like a walking drift of daffodils. Something more abstract felt like the way forward. A few years back I used to collect textures for a graphic designer of my acquaintance. Rock formations, seaweed, sand ripples on the beach after the tide goes out... You get the idea - the kind of things a city dweller wasn't likely to get their camera on without a trip to the coast. Surely I could find something there.
Nope. - The beach textures weren't really saying spring so I eventually selected an image of some sphagnum moss in a verdant shade of green. I isolated one of the rosettes, reflecting it horizontally and vertically to create a four rosette motif which could then be repeated as a textile print. I liked the way the reddish tips fade into the black background and the contrast between the vivid green against black, but it wasn't quite was I was imagining. That black wasn't really chanelling spring for me.
For version two I chose a green from within the rosette's colour palette to create a softer colour for the background. To give the print some more visual interest I duplicated the layer and offset it to fill some of the blank space then faded it to 75% opacity so it would create some depth.
That created a more pleasing pattern but it still had a strong grid like quality to it. Perhaps playing around with scale could improve that.
Increasing the size of the background pattern created a more interesting texture which would still tessellate - could be repeated to fit any fabric width. That is the image at the top of the post.
A more densely textured image was created by enlarging and rotating an extra layer of the motif but the rotation meant that the edges of the pattern would no longer interlock to create a repeating pattern over any width or length of fabric. That would work for a quilt background but not a dressmaking fabric though it might be fixable if I crop the image along the centre of the darker rosettes. Something to play with on another day.
What do you think? Did I do the sphagnum moss justice? Which is your favourite print? Have you ever tried creating print on demand fabrics? Who did your printing for you? Why not give them a shout out in the comments. Or let me know if you'd like to see a tutorial on creating repeat patterns.
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