Butterfly Fabric Designs For Handmade Monday

Happy Mother's Day Mum's! I hope you're all being waited on by grateful offspring :) You deserve it!   I made my mum a little tea cosy which i hoped to show you today... however, due to unfavourable weather conditions i haven't been able to photograph it, so it will have to wait, along with a few other things i've been working on.

Happily though, i am someone who always has about 900 projects on the go so i've got some other things to show you - mostly works in progress so all input welcome!

Blue Morpho Butterfly Fabric

This is a painting i did years ago of a blue morpho butterfly. It struck me one day that it might work well as a fabric pattern so i changed the background of the image to a solid red, loaded it up to Spoonflower, and this is how the design turned out...

As it is a one off, without any related designs to turn it into a collection, i'm still thinking about what to do with it... For some reason i keep imagining it on a notebook cover... what do you think it would work well for?

Blue And Yellow Summer Butterfly Fabric

More butterflies now, although a different style altogether. I've been mulling over the idea of creating a summery butterfly fabric for a while... something reminiscent of a walk through a wild flower meadow in mid summer, where whole swarms of beautiful butterflies take flight as you approach them... one of my favourite summer time activities! :)

I started off by playing around with some flowers...

... and then some flowery butterflies.

All of the elements are hand drawn, photographed, colour edited and then assembled.

Then i had a go at putting some designs together. I started off by creating a small print - this image represents what an 8x8 inch swatch of fabric would look like.

I think this could work well for small details like a pocket, or perhaps as some summery bunting... what do you think?

I also decided to create a larger print design for making things like cushion covers and aprons - this image represents what a 22x18 inch piece of fabric would look like.

I'm happy that more of the details in the flowers will come through in this design, although i won't really know to what extent they will be visible until i have the fabric in front of me... computer monitors have their limitations! :)

Colour Variations

I chose the yellow and blue colour palette because it make me think of bright summer sunshine in a clear blue sky.  I'm also starting to experiment with other colour combinations for these designs though - here's the larger print design in purple tones and yellow...

... and pink and purple.

and pink and blue...

I'd love to know your favourites and any others you'd like to see!

When the range is complete, these fabrics will be available to buy from my Spoonflower shop (contact me if you'd like me to let you know when they're in!).

In The Pipeline

I have an idea for a design floating around in my head at the moment that i want to use for fabric and porcelain. I had a little play with painting some elements of it on a mug this week... here's a little peak.

Its going to be called 'Wash Day' and was inspired by my recent burst of spring cleaning during which even the pets had a wash and blow dry! (well... not a blow dry, although i was tempted! :)).

I've already decided that the cat is coming off the line - after all, cats are far to wiley to get caught for a bath aren't they :) It will instead be sitting, cleaning its own face with its paw observing the goings on from a safe distance!  I'm going to include a bird taking a dip in a bird bath i think, along with a few other things... and probably make all the elements a bit larger too.

Do let me know what you think... all thoughts/ideas welcome!

In Other News

Before i take a very enjoyable trip around all the other blogs joining in with Handmade Monday this week, i'm going to be watching the Crufts final.... there's a whippet in it!! Very exciting in our household :)

I will leave you with a photo our little 'Best In Show' watching all the woofers on the tele from the comfort of his favourite spot in front of the fire :)

Thanks for visiting! x