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Geode Treasures – new fabric designs

Geode Treasures
seamless design

Geode Treasures – a new seamless design created for my Spoonflower pattern collection -just won their Weekly Design Challenge (Feb 26-March 7, 2014). Every week, Spoonflower presents a design theme and hundreds of fabric designers submit original work for consideration then vote for their favorites. This week, the challenge was Geodes and Gemstones. It’s a theme that resonates with me and my art making so I am pleased my design peers liked it, too.

This design has a varied scatter repeat, which makes it great for larger projects.

Geode Treasures is part of a collection of new fabrics and prints based on sketches of rock formations and imaginary orbits and maps I’ve been working on and translating to seamless repeats.

See Geode Treasures at Spoonflower.
Please visit my Spoonflower Store to see many more designs by Eleanor Ramsay.

Geode - original sketch
Geode – original sketch
Design of the Week
Banner at Spoonflower
geode treasure on sateen
Printed on Sateen
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Fractal Explorations

I have been spending much of the past year working on fabric design. Lately, I have been focusing on the fractal geometry and digital collages that drew me to the Spoonflower website last year. I had a few earlier works printed on delicate cotton voile fabric. I’d been working on these large prints for a few years, but at a bit at a loss on how to finish them, make them something more than light on a screen or flat digital prints. Fabric flows and moves and allows light to pass through it. It is dynamic and alive where paper is static. Since the early tests, I dived in pretty hard, researching ornament and pattern and retuning to a process that has rekindled my creativity. Spoonflower hosts a theme contest each week and I have approached them as a learning opportunity. While not all of my contest designs have been successful, they’ve all challenged me in different ways, getting me to draw again and explore the commercial side of fabric design.

You can see my current collection at Spoonflower.

New Geometrics (or, will work for shoes)…

Here are a few small images of some of my latest geometric designs.

 

 

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cut and sew – mini backpack

backpack sketch
original sketch

This is my first try at a cut and sew pattern. Since my sewing skills are minimal, it needs to be something I could actually make. Spoonflower, where I have been selling and sharing fabric designs, has a weekly theme contest and many designers participate. This week the challenge is to create a cut and sew pencil case. I thought a variation of a drawstring backpack sized for pens, pencils and a small notebook and phone would be a fun thing to have.

Continue reading cut and sew – mini backpack

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Running Up That Hill

I’ve been walking through the Tufts campus near my home – for the exercise but also because the pay off is so worth it. Tufts is built in a hilly area that straddles Medford and Somerville. Once at the summit, you can walk out onto the roof of the library and be greeted with an expansive view of the Boston and Cambridge skylines, some of the biggest sky to be found in the area.

Normally, the winters in Massachusetts are quite cold and snowy but this year, despite an early snowfall at Halloween and a few isolated show showers, winter never really arrived. Tufts Hill is also the prime sledding hill for the neighborhood. Bales of protective hay carefully placed in front of each large tree by the ever-busy Tufts maintenance crews just served as a reminder of how unusual this winter was.

The The Tisch Library rooftop garden and open lecture space is called Alex’s Place, named for a student who committed suicide in 2003. It is not an accident that the views from there are soul renewing and awe inspiring. The plantings and structures are simple and manage, at least in my opinion, to deftly tie this special place to the original brutal architecture of the library in an understated but perfectly conceived way.

Most of these images were just taken with my phone. I did bring along my new Nikon a few times. As this mild winter turns to spring, I will continue to trek up that hill and capture the changes. Maybe next year I’ll get to sled down.