Spoonflower’s 12 Days of Design: Day #1: Inspiration
Today I really dove in with both feet to this design challenge that Spoonflower has put on. Day #1 in the challenge is all about finding inspiration for your project. I excel at finding inspiration. I excel less at implementing my own ideas. But, Day #1 was a breeze for me.
I’ve recently been taking photographs of patterns and images from books that appealed to me, along with saving images I find on the internet. So I gathered them all in one place, and then narrowed it down to the ones which inspired me the most, so as to narrow my focus for this first project.
Happy Cats from maigocute.com. Check them out! http://www.maigocute.com/collections/fabric/products/happy-cats-japanese-fabric-cotton-shirting-westex
I thought about what kinds of fabric patterns that I, myself, would want to use. Japanese fabrics are a great inspiration for me in that regard. Then I narrowed it down a bit, considering colors along the way. (Though I think the color scheme is another day in the challenge.) I’m not great at coming up with ideas out of thin air, but I’m much better at thinking of original ideas after looking at what others have done. By noticing what kinds of images and patterns attract me, I can narrow down my own focus of what to draw and create.
While I gathered inspiration, I also gave some thoughts to creating whole fabric collections later on. I’ll be sure to read this article at that point. Since I’m not starting out with a whole line of fabrics, but rather just one or two patterns, I didn’t spend hours and hours on the inspiration step. I just don’t have time. But it was against my character to not be thorough, so I had to fight my inner nature. But for this project to succeed, it can’t take over my life. A girl’s got to eat, you know (and make the money to do so).
Hopefully anyone playing along at home also found great inspiration today.
If you’re lacking in inspiration, you should spend more time learning how to use the internet. Or just buy Spoonflower’s book on fabric design, The Spoonflower Handbook. (A Field Guide to Fabric Design is another good book for this.)
See you tomorrow!
