A few new Chinoiserie fabrics

Several years ago I created the rather popular "Escher Pagoda" design on Spoonflower.com.

I have done several custom orders including matching paint colors and enlarging and rotating the fabric.

This Australian customer wanted the railroaded orientation and an enlargement for the this daybed.

Over the weekend I created a custom color and began to think about new designs.
Photographs were manipulated in several ways to create these.

I came up with this...

and this...

I would like to do more Chinoiserie designs too.

Any requests?

7 fun, fresh Chinoiserie fabrics

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will have seen my fabric designs before. 

My Escher pagoda and "Tea caddy" were a fun way to take actual antiques that I own and turn them into modern, and fresh looks. I have used several around my house and lately I am inspired to dream up a few new ones based on my great-grandmother's antiques.

Escher pagoda in Radish

 It seems that I am not the only one up to the same thing. The much blogged about Dana Gibson for Stroheim delightfully captures the tradition in Chinoiserie motifs in a cheerful, stylish manner. If you have not browsed her site you really are missing out.

Canton

 Co-founder of O'verlays, Danika Herrick has a few incredible Chinoiserie fabrics also.

Her "Trellis" design is a friendly bamboo fretwork array that I have been hunting a spot for in my house. "Cloud Pagoda" by Danika Herrick comes in quite a few colorways but my favorite is the orange/pink.

Trellis on coral

Are you totally crushing on this updated Chinoiserie look too?

fabric love

This tablecloth is happening at my house on Thanksgiving. It arrived yesterday and I am in love with it.

Way to go Target.

I hope I can come up with a picture worthy tablescape.

If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen one of my new fabric designs,

I had some random watercolor flowers that I painted last year just to play with the watercolors. Nothing really equaled a composition, just floating blooms. That happened to translate nicely into this floral fabric.

I would like to do more. Any ideas?

Giveaways coming next week!

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Featured by Spoonflower!

I was surprised and thrilled to see my "Escher pagoda" in Navy Bamboo featured on Spoonflower's Latest favorites this morning.

It has proven to be rather popular and I have several colors. Earlier this year, I enlarged and railroaded the design for a customer to cover a large headboard.

Have you Spoonflowered?

Fun with fabric design

My Saturday night went like this: Shirley Temples, popcorn, Despicable Me on the sofa. Then I got antsy and decided to play with fabric design for awhile.

I took a photo of a piece of porcelain and manipulated it for the design.

 Here is a closer look.

I played with the colors..

I made several colorways.

 I even made one for the color allergic. You know who you are!

The funny thing is that I like the grayscale version best.

I have not proofed them for color so they are not for sale unless I get a request.

Which is your favorite?

OK guys. I have a question for you

I need a man's opinion and my husband will just say, "Whatever you want, Honey." He is a smart one!

I am making some headway in my son's room redo. By headway I mean filling up garbage bags with stuff that should NOT have been in his closet and staring at mystery stains on the carpet.

I have also made a few purchases that I am delighted with.

 The walls will be a deep,smoky navy. SW Naval 6642 to be exact and the bed will have charcoal, silver and navy fabrics. The bed is a dark wood and I have a midcentury dresser that is also fairly dark.

Unlike my indecisiveness with my kitchen chairs, I've got this one figured out.

I want it to be a masculine, moody space with a hint of Bohemian vibe. Enough Boho to be interesting not questionable.

Here are a few of my inspiration images.

So here is the only part that I am unsure about.

The office chair on wheels has to go but I will need a chair in the room. I can raid the furniture graveyard basement for a chair and recover it. My mind jumped immediately to my Escher pagoda fabric...

But is Chinoiserie too feminine?

 Ladies, please weigh in too.

Things to play with

My fabric designs

Do you ever feel like avoiding the things you should be doing and resort playing with things online? I am not talking about Candy Crush Saga (I am never talking about those games) I am talking about the wealth of sites that let you customize their product and see it before you order.

Here are my faves.

We all know about Spoonflower, right? It is a deep hole to fall into. I have uploaded and tweaked image after image only to notice that it is suddenly 2 am.

Fabric is something I can never get enough of so I have played with Spoonflower a lot. It is one of my favorite diversions.

I was catching up with one of my favorite blogs, Privilege and found this personalizer from Crane & co.

Cute, right?

Why stop there? Did you know that you can design your own US postage?

There are several sites but I  tried Photostamps.com and it is actually real postage.

I had a ton of fun playing with my paintings on stamps and trying the customizable ( albeit ghastly) borders.

 I had a hard time visualizing what exactly would look good surrounded by a border of hearts or balloons but they are available.

Found anything good to play with lately?

A kindred spirit for cheap

Yesterday the seamstress knocked on my door and said, "I lost your phone number but it is you. Do you want a delivery?" I was thrilled. Last week, I sent her away with my Spoonflower fabric and this pouf.

catalog photo

She was practically bouncing with excitement that I had created the fabric with a painting of mine and instantly understood what I was envisioning. We chatted about lots of creative, artsy things and despite being a few years my senior she was as cute and full of life as my four year-old.

I showed off my other fabrics and she was smitten.

 

I asked about the lead time and she got a familiar look on face. The one that says "you'll think I'm nuts" and told me it was kind of interesting and she'd probably go home and start cutting.

Hoo-freakin'-ray!

The bonus was that the price for the custom ottoman cover with lining and zipper was $95!!!!

Her pillow price is super reasonable too.

I sent her away with a few pieces of Le Lac I have been hoarding.

New fabric love

I have been meaning to design and order more fabric (for yet another pillow) from Spoonflower.

I was just going to modify one of my previous designs but I was too lazy to climb the steps and grab my color map. Pathetic, I know.

Anyhoo, I often upload a painting of mine only to see that it really does not work but today it did.

 I used this painting that recently sold and used a mirror repeat to create this fabric.

I totally dig it and ordered a yard for that pillow I mentioned. It will give me a chance to try out a new workroom.

Pillow talk

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend. The weather was gorgeous here. My weekend was not bad, just oddly full of encounter's with random screaming crazy people and a very unfriendly dog in the drugstore. Yup, you read that right IN the drugstore. I was not happy about a dog trying to bite my child at the checkout at Walgreen's but I do find strangers screaming at me for no reason kinda funny.

On to the real reason we are here...pillows and fabric.

My pillows made from my Spoonflower fabric arrived last week.

I wasn't feeling just the pink and the black and so I added the pink and orange lumbar pillows from World Market. There are several heavily pink paintings around the room and my Brno chairs are orange velvet but there are also the mainly citrine curtains and the gray sofa.

You can see my" Escher Pagoda" design fabric on the first pillow. It is a 12 x 12 but it was suppossed to be a 16 inch square pillow, so I was a little disappointed.

I am not loving the black and white pillow in my room. I think I should have added a citrine "Escher pagoda". My family hates them all. Hrrumpf. They don't understand the mix of furniture. I think it is time to lose the temporary coffee table and find a better looking piece of furniture for the TV. Notice I am not showing you either. Just feeling a little self-conscious.

I am thinking the color story is a bit disjointed at the moment. Thoughts?

I also received the test swatches of my "Carolina coast" collection of Spoonflower fabrics.

Here are a few quick shots I took. You can see them all here.

As yo can see, the colors are mostly muted blues and beiges.

I often get questions about these fabrics that I thought I would try to answer here.

I own the copyright for the designs but I do not make or stock the fabric. I can't supply swatches but you can get them through Spoonflower. I am working with a person who would like help in reworking the layout of the "Escher pagoda" into a larger print for a headboard. In order to change any qualities of the fabric design on Spoonflower you must get the designer's permission.

Hope your Monday is A-OK !

Coastal inspired fabric

Last week, I asked for opinions on my new Spoonflower fabric designs and one in particular stood out. Kristy, of Design Chic mentioned her beach house and having a desire for something in a very pale blue to match a paint color. I asked for the paint color and said I would try to match it.

Once I figured out that color and a few others to work with it, I had a "Aha" moment. I had been wanting to do more neutral, calm colors but not just in one pattern. I just really did not have a clear vision of what that would be like so I never did anything about it until the I had the notion that a coastal living inspired set of fabrics woudl be perfect.

Sacred tree in four colorways

The collection is called "Carolina coast". I have six colorways but only four are in this fabric.

Breakers in the three main color ways

Above is a stripe called "Breakers" in three colorways; Seaspray, Offshore, and Dune. There are two different pale blue-green colors that I used along with two pale beiges and an off-white throughout the collection. There are also a teal and turquoise in the brighter combinations and of course black and white.

Carolina star

This all came together much more quickly than I thought it would. Either I am getting better at this or I got very lucky. The frustration factor was almost nil.

I ordered sample swatches so that the fabric could be offered for sale in a few weeks and discovered on Saturday afternoon that I had forgotten one pattern altogether.

surf stripe

The forgotten "surf stripe"

This might have been my favorite of the bunch and I still can't imagine how I forgot to add this. It does allow time for me to enlarge the pattern though, I thought it was a bit small.

My bedroom is in this palette and I really want one of these fabrics incorporated in my house now.
I would like to add some grays and maybe a faded Nantucket red.
Thoughts?