Summer walk around Bradfield

The weather has been warm and sunny for over a week.... lovely.  I havent been out walking for a few weeks because I was busy working on my portfolio.  It is an on going project but I wanted to go out in the sun over the weekend and had a walk around Bradfield.  The bright yellow rape fields look stunning and make you feel all summery. We had a well deserved stop off at "Our Cow Molly" ice cream farm shop in Dungworth which sells some interesting flavours such as Blueberry muffin and peardrop.  I couldn't resist having a double cone. Mmm .......yummy
http://www.ourcowmolly.co.uk/flavours/

Fabric 8 competition

I created many designs for my portfolio in the last few week but some were unsuitable for my collections.  One of the designs was a painting I did of red poppies. I had spent time working it into a repeat design so instead of casting it to one side I decided to enter it into the Fabric 8 competition.

I made the design into a repeat pattern using Photoshop.  This can take time but  it was worth the effort.

Afterwards I added a linen fabric texture.

I noticed the fabric 8 design competition on Spoonflower together with Robert kaufman and decided to enter it into the competition.  I was so surprised that my design made it into the top 100 out of over 750 designs.

Top 100 fabric 8 designs

A few days later I was even more surprised that my design had made it into the final 8.  I really wasn't expecting anything like that. Spoonflower printed my design onto fabric along with the other final 8 contestants.

http://blog.spoonflower.com/2012/05/fabric8-finalists-advice-for-creating-fabric-collections.html

Final 8

Each of the finalists have to design a range of 8 fabrics.  I also participated in an online interview with Spoonflower which is here on the spoonflower blog.

http://blog.spoonflower.com/2012/05/fabric8-finalist-profile-mandy-kippax.html





Pink Pig sketch book

Since my last post I have been really busy!  I have created a whole new portfolio of textile designs.  As well as working on textile designs I entered my floral drawing into the "pink pig" sketch book  design competition and I came third so I recieved a sketch book with my design on the front.  This will be very useful as I have gone through so much paper in the last few weeks.  I love Pink Pig books and bought quite a few when I was studying.  You can can have you own design printed on the front here
http://www.yourpiglet.co.uk/