Design Concept



fabric photos

Branches2 began with a very loose hand drawn sketch of organic shapes that look like branches. It was drawn directly on the touch screen of my Microsoft Surface Design computer. I added two perfect circles that are not concentric to further break up the lines and add more depth. Using Corel Draw and Corel Trace, I turned my line drawing into separate shapes which could be filled with color and pattern.

To create digital patterns, I photographed two of the many fabrics that I painted with dye many years ago and used the images to fill the shapes in my drawing. I spent several days, shifting the images and colors around until I liked the way the whole composition looked. I turned it into a single bitmap and further adjusted the colors and patterns, using Corel PhotoPaint. Finally I designed matching strips for the binding and sent the whole image to Spoonflower to be printed on cotton fabric.

Many different colors of polyester and acrylic thread were used in the free-motion quilting.