Retro Tables + Chairs for Spoonflower!

This week Spoonflower asked their faithful designers to create a design that features tables and chairs.

Retro Tables + Chairs! ©2014 Patty Rybolt Design. All Rights Reserved.

For this prompt I didn't even have to think…I am just drawn to mid-century modern chairs.

I researched photo's of chairs from that era and sketched about 25 different styles before narrowing the field to the final five. The color palette was chosen next... olive, smokey blue and white. When designing fabric, I like the color story to be as important as the images. The olive color really reminds me of a sofa and the appliances my parents had when I was a kid, and the blue was chosen to bring this retro design into today. The white allows you to see the unique shapes of the chairs and to unify their look. If I had put patterns on all of the chairs, it would have looked too busy.
The next step was to arrange the elements into a pleasing pattern and add a pop of color with the tulip flowers in a vase. Finally the dot pattern was added to give some texture to the piece.

Voting starts on Thursday, September 25rd, 2014. Please Vote!

History of Jazz

This week's Spoonflower Design Challenge is 'celebrating the rich history of jazz music'.

I got started by researching on Pinterest. I have a 'vintage graphics + ads' board that has a ton of old Jazz record covers from all of the greats like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington.

'Jazz Groove' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs
fabric, wallpaper, wall decals and gift wrap available soon at Spoonflower.com

I am such a fan of the design from this era. Most of the album covers and posters were done with a limited color palette to keep printing costs down, so I restricted my pattern to 2-colors and white. The green and blue combined at 50% on top of each other make the background olive color.

The instruments were all drawn on my iPad with the Adobe Ideas App. All of the images were done in black and white, sent to 'the cloud' and then colored in Photoshop on my desktop computer. The details like the pigeons, starbursts, dots, stripes and details on the instruments were done with india ink and a '0' round brush on copy paper. I like the painterly feel the marks give to the finished design. When the ink was dry I scanned the marks and colored them in photoshop as well.

Why the pigeons?
They just felt right!

Some of my favorite old album covers… (from Pinterest)!

Miles Davis,
Newport Jazz Festival, 1958

Miles Davis

Dizzy Gillespie…
Fab illustrations on this one!

"Cal Tjader Quintet" 1956 Fantasy Records 

Dizzy Gillespie

Roy Eldridge, Collates,
Cover by David Stone Martin

Abner Graboff design, 1955,
Pete Jolly Sextet.
From Mid-centuria blog.

Paul Bacon design Blue Note 10
'Mellow The Mood'

Hans Michel + Günther Kieser, 1957

Previews designed as a fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Voting starts Thursday, February 13th, 2014 and continues until Thursday, February 20th, 2014. Please Vote!

'Love Garden' Cheater Quilt

these colors + white

The challenge of the week... Design a cheater quilt with a spring floral theme using the restricted palette below and white. Cheater quilt blocks feature fabric designed and printed to look like patchwork or applique so that you can skip the piecework and go straight for quilting.

I started this challenge with developing a focal point design and then designed coordinate patterns using elements and icons from the original design.  I drew tons of flowers and birds with a paintbrush and india ink, then drew a ton more with a black marker. I scanned the images and arranged them into a pattern that worked for me in photoshop and played with the colors required for the challenge. (Also in Photoshop). 

'Love Garden' Peacock Floral…

'love garden' peacock floral

 Once I had the focal point design I moved on to design coordinating patterns to use in my cheater quilt design. I wanted to design a few small print designs… dots, small florals (ditsy prints), and a stripe to use with my peacock design as well as incorporating solids to keep the overall design feeling modern.

daisy dot (orange)

'love garden' stripe #3

'love garden' swoop

queen anne's lace

ditsy daisy dot (puce)

When the print and coordinates were finished I moved on to the quilt block design itself. I drew a square and marked the center and measured an inch above, below and side to side. Took a plate from my kitchen and drew a curve. Then I scanned the curve into photoshop. I copied and pasted the curves until I had a design that I liked.
When the square was done I opened a new file in Photoshop to be 1/4 of the fat quarter size (9"x 10.5"). I copied the block and stretched the square to the new block size which would make my finished design have a large oval when duplicated. (Four blocks appear in a fat quarter, 16 squares appear in a yard of fabric.)
I copied and pasted the fabric patterns into the block shapes and moved them around until I liked the look. I used some solids here and there as well.
The finished design…

'love garden' - cheater floral quilt block ©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

Design previews were presented as a fat quarter(21" x 18"). Deadline for entry was January 7th, 2014, voting is now through January 16th 2014! Please Vote!