Progress #1

Hello!

One of the flower motifs for my new collection

Hope you have had a lovely weekend. It was incredibly windy and rainy here... Not that I needed an excuse to stay indoors. I am so fired up at the moment with wanting to build my portfolio and improve my Illustrator skills that I'm really having to tear myself away from the computer to get other important things done - all I want to do is draw and create patterns!

I am excited to say that I got stuck into my January collection on Saturday, drawing lots of cheerful floral motifs and strawberries. I'm keen to create an arborescent or Pampalore style pattern for this collection as I feel this will be a great leap forward in my practice. So far I have tended to mainly do toss repeats and I feel frustrated by the fact that I haven't yet made anything that repeats in this way - i.e. where the motifs are joined together by stems/branches, making it look very organic and not grid like at all.

Googling images of arborescent doesn't bring up many examples (a strange mish mash of pictures awaits!) so I've posted these two photos from Pinterest - neither of which are credited to anyone, anywhere, sorry. This is the kind of construction I am hoping to achieve, lots of motifs and stems intertwined. Being that I haven't studied the history of textiles I am struggling a little bit to come up with the correct terminology when it comes to pattern types/styles, so I apologise if I am rambling a bit! I do have a wonderful book called: 'Textile Design: 200 Years of Patterns for Printed Fabrics arranged by Motif, Colour; Period & Design' by Susan Meller & Joost Effers, which offers a wide survey of the many different pattern categories in existence. I will be reviewing this book in a later post but to summarise it offers a lot of inspiration and information with several examples of each pattern type/style and a brief explanation of each one too. It's a great introduction to world pattern but I think I might like to now try to find out a little bit more about one or two styles and periods. I guess what I really need is a reading list for Textile History from a degree course. If anyone wishes to oblige, it would be greatly appreciated! I am also in the market for buying second hand Textile and Surface Pattern Design course books from anyone who has recently completed a degree so please do get in touch if you have books to sell or have any recommended reading for me.

Thanks for reading!
Frankie x