My friend Mary and I are embarking on a new fabric design project together. We are going to try something neither one of us have tried before.
I want to design something for my new studio (that I don’t have yet but will). I would like to have a large scale design on a single fabric panel where the design can repeat as it gets longer but the width of the design is the entire width of the 44” panel and it doesn’t repeat. I hope that made sense. I would like 2 of these panels to make curtains (from Spoonflower of course!) Mary of Royal Forest was up for this collaboration and we are really having fun with it.
I want to create a huge Tree of Life. I want the branches to spread that 44” wide and if I want 2 yards of it, it will just grow taller. On this tree, I thought it would be fun to have different spiritual symbols—fruits of the spirit, lamb, fire, water, etc. The problem is that it is VERY easy to make something completely cheesy with this concept and I want to make something cool and visually interesting. Before I get into our progression of our design, I have to share with you some images that Mary and I found in our research. It’s amazing the things that you can find on the internet.
The Clam:
The seashell or scallop is a symbol for Christian baptism or the baptism of Jesus. It is also a symbol for pilgrimage and the spread of the Gospel to the world.
If you need to purchase animals for your carousel, you can find this at the Carousel of Happiness.
One of the few Christian symbols dating from the first century is that of the Good Shepherd carrying on His shoulders a lamb or a sheep, with two other sheep at his side.
And last but not least:
You can make this purchase to remind your husband or really whoever HERE. Really, the items out there never cease to amaze me.
OKAY, BACK TO BUSINESS:
We started messing around with ideas and Mary roughly sketched them out. Here is a one-sided tree with a couple of things. We toyed with the idea of using negative space, but after seeing things on paper, we decided against it.
I took the sketch and started to work with it in Inkscape. Mary and I both decided we wanted the tree to have character but definitely be less curly. Here is what I came up with.
I am currently in love with bold green. I don’t know why. We thought of the tree being brown and the background green, but it was too dark. So, we just made the tree green.
This tree is a bit chunkier on the right side and Mary thought that when it repeated it would be right-side heavy. So, I copied and flipped this portion of the tree to complete our “base.”
There. We are both really happy with that. If the width of this tree is 43” then it can just grow and repeat length-wise.
I wanted to mess with a color for the background because the white just seemed a bit stark to me. We aren’t married to this idea, but yellow is happy. we can always change color later. Plus Spoonflower yellows are excellent.
Here are just a couple of the symbols Mary started messing with. I really like the idea of them staying white. Kind of brings them all together. I think the water and the fire droplets will change just a bit.
Just putting things on the tree. Remember that designing is a process and everything can change in a heartbeat.
Well, that is a long enough post for today. Most of you won’t even read to the end of this. I know my sister Megan won’t!
Love,
