What I did on my Staycation: Custom Colette Ginger Skirt

As you can probably tell from my serious lack of recent blog posts... only 2 last year... I've been a little busy raising a little human who just turned 1! As a celebration of his birthday and my birthday next week, I took a week off of my real life job to recharge and work on personal projects.

One of the biggest goals I had was to sew a skirt with an original pattern designed by me. For the pattern, I refreshed an old motif I doodled a few year's back:

Here's what I ended up with. It's available now on Spoonflower!

I ordered two yards of Spoonflower's new lightweight twill. It came out a little more gray than I expected... not sure what happened but I think maybe it was just how the fabric absorbed the ink? Is that a thing?

Anyways... I had two big challenges/learnings with the skirt (Colette's Ginger Skirt).

1. There's a seam right down the middle front and middle back... so some degree of pattern matching was a must. I give myself a solid A- for matching the front/back seams, but basically ignoring the side seams and waistband.

2. The INVISIBLE ZIPPER UGHGHUGHGHGU. I give myself a 4/10 for this one. I got the sucker in... but it required some hand stitching and cursing, several episodes of seam ripping... and I managed to put a hole in the fabric. Don't look too closely. GRRR. Better luck next time.

Overall, I'm very very very happy with the final piece. I was really nervous about the whole thing because I've attempted a few other things with my custom-printed fabrics... and they've always been kind of disappointing. And I've never made a fitted skirt before... and #mombodproblems.

Anyways, definitely not disappointed about this one. I plan on wearing this one A LOT :o)

Ready, Set, Sew: Race Day Tank Top

I have to admit that I'm not always the most enthusiastic runner. My motivation has a lot more to do with the clothes than the many other benefits of running. So I decided, after my first tank top turned out pretty well, I needed to try out Spoonflower's Performance Pique fabric to make a running tank for the Pikes Peek 10K race this past weekend.

I again used an existing tank top (with a racer back) as the pattern, which worked out pretty well, but I tried another method for the binding and ended up with straps that were slightly different sizes (oops!). I also wish I had made it a little bit longer, but overall it fit pretty well.

I really loved the fabric. It was light and surprisingly great quality. I think it will hold up really well over time. I picked my Block Print Blossom pattern in Hydrangea for the task. 

Here's a pic at the finish line! I'm always the happiest when its all over. Photobombed by the Geico Gecko of course. 

It was really cold at the start so I wore my jacket through the first few miles, but was delighted when the sun came out! Good thing I remembered my sunscreen ;o)

Anyways, after all my crazy fabric design projects of late, I decided to try something a little different. Here's a sneak peek... more to come!

Feeling Just Fine & Dandelion

Hooray! Today I finally got the swatches from my Fine & Dandelion patterns from Spoonflower! You can see the whole collection here. I was so excited I made this little movie on Instagram:

A video posted by Liz Weaver (@snarkybeagle) on Apr 16, 2015 at 6:28pm PDT

This was definitely a labor of love as I put in a lot of post-full-day-of-real-work hours in to it. Here's what the primary pattern (that I shared first on Instagram two weeks ago) looks like close up...

I really like the natural/linen-looking background color and the detail in the flowers. If you are so inclined, I entered it in to the final Creative Bug Fabric Design Challenge and I would greatly appreciate your vote (no login is necessary)! Here's the other main pattern I made...

As you can tell by the grass in our backyard, the collection was inspired by all the weeds that are coming back in full force now that it is finally Spring! Pretty soon there will be clover and bumblebees all over the place (and I'm totally ok with that!)

Here are all the swatches together. I just want to say thank you again for everyone's encouragement during this process. I know it may not seem like a huge deal but this has been a fun/exhausting creative outlet, and I want to hug every single person who has shown even the tiniest bit of enthusiasm or interest. You guys are the BEST!

Tank Top Sewing and a Fine & Dandelion Sneak Peak!

Well, it's been a really exciting week! I made my first sale on Spoonflower (woohoo, $1.35! lol) and I was picked for Creative Bug's Instagram Challenge for their Fabric Design class. More on that in a minute, but first, I recently embarked on learning to sew with knit fabrics.

It actually wasn't as hard as I expected. I don't have a serger, so the seams weren't as pretty as they could be. I also made the mistake of not paying attention to the length vs. width (which really matters with knits). Luckily Spoonflower's Modern Jersey is VERY stretchy in both directions so it still fits well. Lesson learned!

I made the pattern myself (also a first!) from a Banana Republic tank top. I used this tutorial from Anna at Noodlehead as a guide as well as Creative Bug's Sewing a T-Shirt class.

Here's the design/fabric before I cut it. The design was featured this week on Spoonflower's "Hot Trends" this week and can be purchased here in fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap!

As I mentioned earlier, I've added Creative Bug's Fabric Design class to my ever growing list of online class credentials. And I was thrilled to win their Instagram challenge this past week! The feedback from folks was an AMAZING confidence booster. I seriously want to hug every person who liked or commented on the post. Here was my submission:

I've spent the last few days furiously finishing the pattern I posted and creating a whole collection around it to share on Spoonflower. I just got everything uploaded today and ordered the swatches. Here's a sneak peak of a few of the other designs and coordinates. I hope you are as excited as I am!

Block Print Blossoms now on Spoonflower!

Guess what! My Block Print Blossom patterns are now on my Spoonflower shop. And, oh yeah, I have a Spoonflower shop! You can order any of the patterns, in three color ways, on a variety of their fabrics, wallpapers and wrapping papers. I got the fabric swatches in the mail this week!

I mentioned a few weeks ago when I posted my block print patterns that I feel like I've come a really long way when it comes to designing patterns. I started this blog almost seven years ago and I started thinking about designing patterns almost five years ago. I fumbled through sort of figuring things out myself and toodled around with that for a long time.

I've always thought about posting my designs on Spoonflower or another print-to-order site like Society 6, Zazzle, etc., but I never really felt like my designs were good enough (whatever that means). In the past year I've taken a lot of design classes (and purchased a new laptop) and I finally feel really proud of what I'm making.

I don't necessarily have big expectations in terms of actually selling stuff, but it was an exciting milestone that I felt like I could. I greatly appreciated the support from many friends and classmates that were a huge confidence booster. Anyways there's always a long ways to go, but I'm excited to share these patterns and I hope you will visit my Spoonflower shop to take a look :)

**UPDATED 4/18** I just got a whole yard of the main fabric (in hydrangea) to make in to a running top! So excited! Check it out:

Where's the snow?

It seems like this year we haven't gotten as much snow as last year (knock on wood). In fact I think it's supposed to get up in the 50s this weekend! The one thing I love about snow are the shapes. Having grown up in Florida, I still love to look at snowflakes really close up.

Anyways, snow was clearly the inspiration for these patterns. I kept meaning to create more patterns for the set, but instead I just focused on two patterns and practiced putting them in to different color ways. Last year, I did this doodle with chalk so I just adapted the shapes a little.

Not to turn all 3-year-old girl on you, but I also have a deep love for the movie Frozen. I KNOW! The Frozen craze has been going on way to long, but I really love the colors and interiors... so I picked out the colors from some of the screenshots :) I will not apologize for my nerdiness!

Anyways, probably back to block printing this weekend, but I wanted to share these since I was working on them this month! One more...

Llama Llama Llama

In the progression of my pattern design dabbling, I decided the next step was to try to put together a coordinated collection of patterns.

Since I started out with the Fancy Camel, the obvious next step was a llama I doodled a few months ago. I started a Pinterest board, and found lots of textiles, carvings and artwork from South America for inspiration. I did a page of hand-drawn doodles and got started...

Lots of colors, lots going on... it was a pretty great starting point. Unfortunately I had to do the whole thing twice because of my Illustrator novice, but then came the llamas!

I ended up making five different patterns total and varied them up with different colors from the same color schemes and some similar hand-drawn shapes.

My husband declared the this one looked like Christmas trees so at least its seasonally appropriate? Finally here's the whole shebang together:

My very favorites were the circles. Particularly the dark blue and white (obviously my favorites colors if you've ever seen this blog or my closet before).

All in all, it was more good practice figuring out what worked and what didn't work. I think the biggest lesson for me from this was really to take my time. As previously confessed, I have a tendency to rush something on to the page and call it "good enough," but never actually be happy with it.

I'm not saying all of these patterns turned out perfectly, but I really learned that taking my time with layout, spacing, colors, etc. really brought out a better result... (I know, I know, duh). I was overall please with the result and proud how far of come since some of my early self-taught efforts :)

Big upgrade and more from Pattern Camp

Since Pattern Camp in October, I have been practicing like crazy! You wouldn't know it though from the lack of updates and sharing. I have a pretty short attention span, so I have the habit of quickly whipping things up, then thinking, "oh, I'll go back and perfect this later before putting it on the interwebs." I'm sure you can guess what happens next...

BUT THEN my 6-year-old laptop died. I was pretty devastated that I had lost all of those "just practice" files. So after they were rescued and a new MacBook Pro was purchased, I decided to just go ahead and put 'em out there... perfect or not.

I made the above during Pattern Camp. It's originally this q-tip painting I did a few years ago, turned in to a repeating pattern.

Just a random recent doodle put in to repeat.

Another one from Pattern Camp. It was a little rushed but I was pretty happy with it.

So there you have it. I probably have a dozen more practice pieces so I'll share some more soon!

And can I just say how nice it is to have a computer that doesn't completely melt down when I'm running Photoshop and Illustrator at the same time?! It's a Thanksgiving miracle!!!