Shabby Chic fabric love

I have been having so much fun designing a new Shabby Chic fabric collection called Once Upon A Time.

I painted watercolor pink roses and bluebirds and added some hand-drawn rose bouquets.  Roses and ribbons have always been a special favorite of mine.

I printed this on dreamy Kona Cotton fabric.

I'll be sharing more designs in this collection this week.

Kitten Love

A recent contest on Spoonflower led me to design Kittens in Mittens.  My design is called Mommy Time.

A chevron French script striped cat looks on as her kittens are tucked into patchwork mittens.  A ball of French script black yarn dances through the design with the words kitten and love throughout.

A companion fabric of a stripe design is also available in this small collection.  I love the way this printed on Cotton Sateen fabric.

Welcome 2015 Calendar

It's that time of year when we create calendar tea towels to print on Linen-Cotton Canvas for Spoonflower's annual tea towel contest.

After I made this up, I used a quilt hanger to display my tea towel calendar.

I just love this song...

This year it was an easy design created with my original oil painting as the background for the calendar.   I call the painting The Cottage of Abundance. 

I decided to create two designs, one with the text WELCOME and one without.

My Tea Towel is called Welcome 2015 with text,

The Tea Towel design called Welcome 2015 without text.  Both versions of the design can be found in my Kitchen Tea Towels by the yard fabric collection.  I used the calendar design with the word Welcome  for this year's contest entry.

Painting Christmas

I was painting Christmas, and listening to Christmas music by Michael Buble.

I wanted to paint a little Christmas tree sitting underneath a glass globe.

I started by painting a miniature watercolor painting of a Christmas tree.  I added a bit of glitter.  Then I went to the computer and added lots of digital magic.

Suddenly, Christmas came to life on these fabric designs.  I call the fabric collection, I'll Be Home For Christmas.

I try to sit down and paint for a while, but my imagination really flies when I take that painting and go into the land of digital magic.

Before I know it, I have created prints, products and of course a bunch of fabric designs for the collection.

The icing on the cake is seeing products appear wearing something I just created.  It's a bit like baking.

Creating Faux Vintage Flowers with a Shabby Chic Style

The details of the wedding are coming together, and I was sewing something today for the ceremony.  I stopped to take a break and to create a new item that I have been thinking about.  Listening to Celine Dion sing The Color of My Love.

I love vintage roses, especially to decorate a gift, pin on a jacket or accessorize something or other.

Recently I painted pink cabbage roses and turned them into fabric.  Spoonflower has a lovely cotton voile, which looks similar to nylon that they use for vintage flowers. Soft and transparent enough to give the effect I wanted, I call the design A Shabby Chic Rose Soft.

I started off by ordering a fat quarter of this design in my shop on Spoonflower.  I had it printed in their soft cotton voile fabric.

I  cut out the flowers, and using the flower shape as my template, I cut out a few in plain nylon to go in-between the flower petals.  Stacking them to create a fat enough flower.

Sewing them together and alternating between the plain nylon flower petals and my cabbage rose petals.  Using a pretty pink button, I sewed it on to create the center of the flower blossom.

I used a circle of felt on the back to secure the flower and to allow me to later add a pin for my purse or lapel, or ribbon to  attach to a gift.

Sarah's Birthday is next week, so I wanted to use this one to go on top of her gift.  So, I sewed a bit of ribbon to tie to the ribbon around the gift.

I used my Pink Cabbage Roses on French Script gift wrap design to wrap her gift.  I then attached my pink rose flower to the top of the gift.
(I also have gift wrap available in the Pink Cabbage Roses Design).

Ta Da...some gift wrap, cut-out voile flower petals and a bit of stitches.

The fat quarter hosts enough petals for several flowers.

 Here it is all ready to present.  I found an aqua gift envelope to match perfectly.

Have a beautiful day filled with gifts and smiles.  Now back to my sewing project for the ceremony.

Arranging Delphinium

When I find a garden that truly inspires, it is so easy to begin the design process.  Especially when I am listening to some lovely music as I paint.

Bees hum about pointing to the sweetest smelling flowers.

Delphinium...a flower that is so intricate in design, yet sturdy enough to grow so tall it towers over all the other flowers in the garden.

Inspiration followed and I designed a collection called Delphinium Gardens. 

I painted a few watercolor illustrations

and turned them into fabric collections.  I am still working on some ideas for Daisy Garland fabric collection.

The flowers in the gardens are so inspirational, I can't stop designing.

Spoonflower recently announced a new fabric, Faux Suede.  For fun I printed it on one of the Delphinium designs in my Delphinium Gardens collection.  I can't capture how beautiful it looks and feels.

My samples came back in my Delphinium Garden Collection.  They printed beautifully on Kona Cotton fabric.

This is just a small sampling of all the fabrics in the collection.  I have never used this green before, but I love the contrast against the Delphinium blue.

I also love the soft feeling of the Kona Cotton with my designs.  I can see a quilt in this happy design.

Delphinium Garden Fabric Collection on Spoonflower