Behind The Scenes: Creating Serenity Blooms Fabric
The seeds of this collection began in Create Collections with Victoria Johnson—a course for beginners and professionals on creating cohesive commercial collections. I repeated the class several times, gaining new insights and skills each time. It was invaluable to my professional development.
At the time, I was spending a lot of time in our wild gardens, listening to the bird songs and witnessing everything bloom. This is where my inspiration for the collection came from. I hand-painted all of the icons, and then finished and compiled them digitally. I had several beautiful placement designs when I finished the workshop, some of which went on to be licensed for greeting cards.
I was thrilled when Poppie Cotton noticed my work on Instagram and approached me to collaborate on fabric. I had been dreaming of doing fabric for years, and had just done my first collection with Hawthorne Supply Co, so I was ready for an exclusive partnership.
The Poppie Cotton aesthetic was a natural fit for me—I fell in love with the farmhouse vintage colours and sweet uplifting patterns. The palettes were so aligned with my own aesthetic. I worked closely with Lori, one of the wonderful owners and a talented designer, to develop patterns specific to quilting. She provided art direction and taught me a lot! It was a steep learning curve, but so worth it. I’m very grateful to be collaborating with such a wholehearted and kind team. The result is a gorgeous collection with my signature whimsical style, and a sprinkle of delicately wild.
I enjoyed exploring Eurasian Hoopoe birds and playing with my own interpretations of them, doing line-drawn hummingbirds, and creating my first stripe (rainbow, of course). I learned how to convert my designs to vector, and became a huge fan of the vast possibilities vectorizing offers. Especially for recolouring artwork.
My favourite thing about this process has been seeing this meaningful and personal collection become something that can feed creativity in others, ready to live onward and become new creations under the needles of others. I’ve gotten my own sewing machine whirring again, stitching beautiful dolls and playing with fabric arts. It has rejuvenated my creativity in new ways.
Creating dolls with my Serenity Blooms fabric 🌸 Sewing Pattern coming soon – I will announce it on my newsletter and instagram.
Serenity Blooms fabric will be available in stores around the world in January 2025.
