Happy New Year to all

Corona imperialis and Butterfly fabrics

Insectivorous plants and Insect fabrics

Pomegranate and Pomegranate cross-section fabrics

I have just come on line to post a greeting wishing all my viewers a "Happy New Year". At the same time I thought that I would try again to upload pics of my latest designs that I did to accompany the bespoke  botanical pieces that I posted earlier. I am delighted to say that this time I have been more successful . Hope you like them so far but I might experiment with different colourways.

New Collections

A lot of the last week of term was spent trying to digitally print my Angiosperm fabrics onto linen. This proved difficult, mainly because the fibres off the material kept blocking the printer heads. Eventually I abandoned the linen and successfully printed all four onto quite a heavy cotton. This worked really well and I'm pleased with the results.
I did however find some time to respond to Trisha's suggestion that I develop a collection of fabrics and wallpapers to accompany each of the botanical printed pieces that I posted last week and these are the ones I have completed so far.

Unfortunately I got a "Server Rejected" message when I went to upload the pics. According to the help forum this is quite common with the newer "Post Editor" so I followed their recommendations to change my settings and select the old one. i did this but still no success so for now I will have to keep you in suspense!

Snowy Weather

 

View of our back garden

Week 10 has been a bit of a disaster weather wise but it does look pretty.
 I did manage to get into college on Tuesday to find that I was the only one from my group and we had a power cut mid-morning, which meant no network, photocopiers, digital printers etc. Luckily it didn't last too long and I managed to get 3 new designs printed onto fabric in the afternoon. This was despite getting to within a few centimeters from the end the first time when the fabric jammed because of creases on the roll - ugh! I had to choose a different fabric but  I am really pleased with the result. It also means that over Christmas I can embroider into them to get 3 bespoke textile pieces


Corona Imperialis

Pomegranate plant



Insectiverous plants

Collection complete

Angiosperm IV

Week 9 and I have now completed the Angiosperm (which simply means flowering plant) collection - although i might have to rename it after the strange reactions it has prompted from some.This final design, in repeat, was based on my drawings of the Bird of Paradise plant I saw in Darwin's greenhouse combined with an endangered species known as Eye of the Crocodile as well as other early flowering plants such as the Camellia and Magnolia. The colour palette was inspired by one I saw in Bev's Texitura colours and trends book  called New Byzantine.
 Two of the designs were digitally printed onto linen on Tuesday and two more are scheduled for tomorrow. That's progress!

Angiosperm III

Angiosperm III
featuring lotus buds and floral diagram

New colour way and layout for Angiosperm II

Week 8 started off frustratingly slowly as I experimented with changing Angiosperm II and it proved more difficult than I expected - but I did end up with a better layout and a new colour pallette. Things then got much better as I went on to design my third repeat furnishing fabric which features the Lotus flower in a bright and on trend colourway.

Dan Bennett

I recently followed up a link in my regular In the Loop newsletter from Coats Crafts and discovered a new designer called Dan Bennett who has created a collection of fabrics for Rowan. There are 17 designs and they look amazing. The inspiration comes from his interest in ancient geometric symbols carved in stone by prehistoric man but they actually remind me of some of my own drawings of the under surface of jellyfish and other microscopic sea creatures like diatoms and desmids.

A selection of my drawings of marine creatures

Angiosperm II

Week 7 has been and gone and I now have one more design for a furnishing fabric in repeat. Once again I used my drawings of ancient flowering plants i.e. lilies but combined them with genetically significant sweet peas, which Gregor Mendel studied in the Nineteenth century.This time I have gone for much more muted colours that were inspired by a design I saw in the summer at Chelsea Harbour called Bruges by Watts of Westminster.

Angiosperm II

I'm not sure if I have pulled it off and so would appreciate any comments.