In this article, I want to tell you more about the Romantic Garden collection, which I created at the beginning of 2020. This collection includes three pattern designs: Romantic Garden, Rose Dream and Morning Mist.
Romantic Garden Collection – inspirations
My intention was to create a collection that would be inspired by the vintage fabrics. I was looking for inspiration, among others, by looking through various classic patterns, but also old herbaria.
However, I wanted my pattern designs to be more modern. I also wanted to avoid excessive elegance in favor of simplicity and a more delicate aesthetic.
That’s why I used wildflowers, such as wild roses and forget-me-nots, to create compositions of my pattern designs. In my opinion, pastel color shades also turned out to be perfect for this collection.
Romantic Garden – pattern design for fabrics
Romantic Garden is a pattern design whose composition consists of simple and small wildflowers, such as wild roses, forget-me-nots, and few others makes it very delicate.
Even though the combination of yellow, red, blue, and green is quite bold, the selected colors are rather pastel shades. This is what makes the fabric feel vintage, although I hope I’ve made it look a bit modern as well.
Printed fabrics with this pattern design, especially the one on the green background, are the ones most often chosen by customers of my fabric store. They were used to sewing romantic summer dresses and adorable clothes for children and babies.
Rose Dream – pattern design for fabrics
Roses are a very popular element in pattern designs. Both presented as small flowers, which seem more delicate and romantic, and those presented on a larger scale that are definitely more bold, but also elegant.
I wanted to focus on this first idea, because Romantic Garden is a collection inspired by vintage fabrics. However, I wanted to add a modern twist.
There is more space between individual elements – it is not a dense pattern design. The flowers are not that small – they are rather medium-sized elements.
Even though my watercolor illustrations have some detail, they are rather simplified shapes, which is also a more modern convention. The color palette was reduced to shades of pink and green.
I suggested two background colors – ivory, thanks to which there is greater contrast between the background and the elements, and dusty pink, which makes the whole thing seem more toned down.
Both linen and cotton fabrics with the Rose Dream pattern design are most often chosen for sewing dresses. I think that this pattern design was made for just that! Clothes made of these fabrics are very delicate and romantic, but also simple and modern.
Morning Mist – pattern design for fabrics
Morning Mist is a pattern design that exceeded my wildest expectations in many ways. Let’s start with the fact that fabrics with this pattern are sold in my store in much larger quantities than the others. And these are just small, very simple-shaped, gray wildflowers.
What’s more, these floral illustrations were created almost by accident. I painted them with watercolor paints one evening quite spontaneously and published the concept for pattern design on Instagram @merelysusan.
The number of positive reactions was so significant that I decided to give this project a chance, refine it and add it to the Romantic Garden collection. I found it a bit different from the other two, but still fits the idea.
No matter how many new patterns I created, this one remained the most frequently chosen ones, which means, that my clients ask about fabrics with this pattern design most often. I’m even starting to worry whether I’ll create something similarly good, but I keep trying.
However, I’m glad that sometimes such spontaneous projects created with ease, and also being a creation of my imagination instead of long research, can be surprisingly good. I am grateful that I gave this project a chance.
his year, the morning mist has two new background colors – green and gray. I wonder if they will become as popular as it was with ivory.
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