Thing-a-day.com

Wow, farther behind than I thought on posting my “Thing-a-Day” fabric designs. Time to catch up. Please note, I’m not omitting any of the designs I put in my notebook. Regardless of how much they suck, they’re posted here (for better or worse).

Day 16-Embellished Circles

Day 17-Flag bunting

Day 18-Alphabet

This was a sucky three days. Moving on:

I think Day 19, Intersecting Circles might be my favorite!

Day 20–When the 2 year old helps out

I had my daughter draw some circles–then I didn’t know what to do next–so I colored it in for a “reverse” image.

I didn’t like the circles but I thought the texture of the crayon might be interesting when transferred to screen print. So I colored in some flowers:

Day 21–Crayon Flowers

Day 22–Matchsticks

I can’t recall what I saw that inspired this. But needless to say the execution leaves a lot to be desired

Day 23–Eyelet–I’ve always like eyelet lace

Day 24-Interlocking links

I like this one–I could also see chains rather than this random design

Day 25–I skipped a few days so this is the last design I did during February. Not a strong finish–stars

If you somehow made it this far, I would welcome your feedback on any of the 25 designs (if you choose contributor mdhaworth all my posts will be grouped). I still want to convert at least one into fabric but can’t decide which!

Thanks to the Thing-a-Day creators for inspiring me to try to do a thing a day all month!

Welcome, March.

I couldn’t resist the heart motif on Valentine’s Day

(so behind on posting–less behind on drawing)

I had wanted to do a fabric that was all handwriting–some sort of stream of consciousness rant about something. But I was sick of linear fabric designs. Not that squares aren’t linear. Anyway. Drew squarish shapes. Then some treeish shapes. Then tried to write about trees (harder than I thought it would be)

I’m sure, eventually, I’ll like one of these fabric designs.

I wanted to play with the fat end of the pen and try some swirls and spirals. This was totally free form then I added the dots just because.

It’s interesting to me that the same design looks/feels so different when I’m looking at my sketch book versus looking at it online. The photos aren’t perfect and the different scale makes it look completely different.  All of these are drawn to fill a 8.5×11 inch paper.

I was really tired last night when I did this one so I was going for simple. I really like how the fat end of my new pen works like a calligraphy pen. This sheet got some smudges on it but I can use white out.

I think it might be neat to shrink this on the copier and print in on a smaller scale.

P.S. Sorry for so many posts in a row. I have been doing my thing-a-day but not posting every day.

I like the idea of the circles with stripes behind but when I added the “water drops” the pen was too fat and they ended up like watermelon seeds.  This is my least favorite design to date but I think if I started over with the same concept I could love it.

I pooped out on day 10 (and just couldn’t finish a whole sheet of this)

I wanted something I could fill in but the flowers were too small and messy. This one is a miss.

I’ve held onto my high school dictionary forever with the idea that someday I would cut out a definition, blow it up on the copier, and screen print the definition onto the object itself.

Since I’m coming up with fabric designs:

Not sure if you can tell from the photo but these are synonyms for fabric and related things (cotton, quilted, linen, material etc). I made a square so I could repeat the image to create yardage. I do plan to blow up the size of the text on the copier.

While I was rocking my daughter I noted the pattern of the baby gate and thought it would make interesting “cells” on a pattern.

Once I traced all the circles, I decided to incorporate some Ed Emberley inspired finger print birds randomly in the “cells”.

I really want to get into less directional and perhaps more organic designs that would look good in small pieces in a quilt.  21 days left.

I saw some Gee’s Bend quilts online tonight and immediately wanted to do random squares for tonight’s fabric design.  No pattern in mind, just drawing squares and fitting them together like improvisational quilts. I had also wanted to create a fabric that can be colored in (since the printing will be one color). I could also imagine the squares being filled with fabric applique.

I added the dots for a little interest but I still find this design busy, dizzy and messy. Maybe it will grow on me.

Too many meetings today at work and several of us were doodling. I found different peoples’ doodles really interesting. Folks seem to have a distinctive doodle style. I copied this pattern from my boss but doing lines and lines of repeats with no “do overs” about killed me. The little hearts are where I totally lost my rhythm.

sorry for the blurry photo.

So far I’m not sure any of these drawings are fabric printing worthy but I’ll keep at. 23 more chances to succeed.

It occurred to me that if I’m going to be able to repeat these designs to print on fabric they have to line up. So I marked each side of the paper.

This design was started on day 5 but I feel asleep–literally with the paper in my lap–so I finished on day six. Words were inspired by Valentine’s Day (obviously).

This one was way too fussy to draw–not my forte and not a good fit with my fussy baby this evening.

I was going to do a fourth row but ran out of steam. The inspiration was from wire work in a Japanese craft book. I think I like the sketch better than the final.

I was out of town so couldn’t post for day #2–and honestly, the day #2 fabric was started on day 1 and finished on day 3. All I did on day 2 was buy a new pen

Jelly jar circles with a few of my favorite letters:

I think this concept would be fun with all the letters that could be “fussy cut” into the centers of quilt squares or used for patches. Anyone else remember the Ramona Quimby books with the cat “Q”?

And just to get the circles out of my system I drew a gazillion with my new pen. I got an arm cramp and paused and decided it looked like stones on a river–so I put in a “river.” Then I started wondering how I would repeat this to make yardage so I tried to set it up so it would fit together. I’ll need to photocopy it to see if I was at all successful.

I’m done with circles for a while. Tomorrow….lines!

Even though I can’t draw worth a darn, for Thing-a-Day I plan to create one design per day that I could potentially print as fabric. My “rules” are:

it has to be a design I can screen print in one color

I can draw it or cut and paste (the old fashioned way) but it won’t be computer generated work.

Once I start a page, no throwing away or going back–I just have to make the best of it–there are only 30 pages in my sketch book.

I plan to explore a few ideas I have and see where it goes. Hopefully with 29 options I can create my own fabric in March and use it in a quilt.

I don’t think I started too strong but there you go: