'Sewing Circles' for Spoonflower!

'Sewing Circles' Collection ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs

The Challenge -
This week at Spoonflower… 'sewing notions' in a special 'Coordinates Design Challenge'!  Designers were asked to design four coordinating prints with the sewing notions theme on a full yard of fabric (42" x 36"). This contest is extra exciting because guest judge Denyse Schmidt, designer, quilter and author, will pick a winner from the top ten community voted designs to be featured on the pages of an upcoming issue of Love Patchwork & Quilting!

The Design - 
This challenge was fun for me. My love of fabric is what started my Spoonflower design obsession. I am a member of my local Modern Quilt Guild chapter, and a huge fan of Denyse Schmidt! 

I started with research, first going to Denyse Schmidt's website to check out her new collections of fabrics and her quilt patterns. Then of images from my Pinterest board on the subject . It has tons of pictures of buttons, threads, and vintage scissors and such. I drew an enormous amount of images in my sketchbook and on my Adobe Ideas app on my iPad.

When the drawings were done I opened them in Photoshop and chose a color palette. The tomato pin cushion was an image that I wanted to use in my final composition, so the red and green were the first colors chosen. I didn't want the pattern to look like Christmas, so I auditioned some darker colors. Plum, aqua and two tones of grey seemed to be working pretty well so I went with it.

The first composition to be completed was the tossed tomato pin cushions. I assembled the color layers in Photoshop and used 4 different drawings in varying sizes and directions, then added the stitching texture to have a hand quilted feel. The sewing circles and the check were done with a hand quilted look. These all went fairly quickly and then I wanted to do a layout with some of the leftover drawings on my screen. The last layout has so many detailed drawings that it took way longer than I wanted, but I am pleased with the result. I have so many images that I actually came up with two completed collections for this topic and could probably do many more!

'pins and needles' Collection
©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs.

Voting starts on Thursday, June 26th, 2014. Vote Here!