My Fabric is Real!

If you get my quarterly newsletter this may not be new news to you. But for everyone else, I have an exciting announcement: I have fabric! This has been a long-time dream of mine to be able to offer my designs on fabric and it is finally here! There are currently 50+ designs, in multiple colorways and 20 different types of fabric to choose from. More designs are added regularly so be sure to come back often.

I am partnering with a sister company of Canwil Textiles called Canvas ETC. They are a U.S-based, minority woman-owned company, that has served as a wholesaler to many businesses since 2002 and now is offering retail services catering to makers and crafters.

They are based in Auburn, GA with their facility for printing in India, where they adhere to high environmental standards in reducing waste and lowering carbon footprint. They also offer cut and sew services which are realized in Blue Ridge, GA so they can help you complete your individual projects, all made in the U.S.

If you have questions about anything you see on the site, just let me, or Canvas ETC, know and we’ll do our best to accommodate your request; and if you love a design that you don’t see on their site, just let me know and I’ll do my best to make that available for you.

Thanks for your support and I look forward to seeing what you do with these new fabrics!

Reflective Patterns

Some folks love either designing in repeat or putting designs into repeat, but I must admit it's not my favorite task. I'm much more of a free flow kind of person. But here is one easy way I can create a quick and interesting repeating pattern, that's different from the traditional square or half drop repeat. And if you are interested, you can watch a 15 minute video of me sketching what is to later become this beautiful decorative pattern.

WATCH HERE>

It's pretty amazing how simple it is and it's fun too!  It took me under an hour to create this pattern from start to finish. Of course I did a tiny bit of cleanup and if I were to do multiple colors, it would take longer, but after I did a live trace in Illustrator, I left the variations of gray because I liked the "antiqued" look that it created and that saved time.

Go to my Product Samples tab to see more reflective patterns that I have designed to be used as tablecloths.

Original scan

Clean up any gaps

So to start, fill a page in your sketchbook with a design—of anything! The key is to have shapes running off the edges and corners so that they will join when flipped horizontally and vertically. Keep this in mind as you are drawing and try to envision what will happen when they are reversed and joined. It makes for less clean up down the road.

Next bring your sketch into Photoshop and flip and copy the image both horizontally and vertically on the top, bottom and sides. You may need to fill in and do slight adjustments at this point if there are any gaps or strange seams (see image below left). 

That's it. You have yourself a cool reflective pattern that you can play with. Have fun! 

Flip horizontally and then vertically

Nature Inspired

Since I've been working from home this past year, I sometimes get a bit str crazy. For me, the best solution for this is to get out into nature and fresh air. I decided to take a drive up to Mount Tamalpais yesterday morning. It was so refreshing! It's only 40 min from the city after all and it's really paradise on a weekday morning. Very few people are up there and I kinda love to be there as the fog lifts and reveals the amazing green hills and views below. 

If you follow my two Instagram feeds (this one and this one) you might have seen a few pictures I posted. There were all sorts of sweet and colorful wildflowers all over the hills and they got me inspired to make this when I got home. 

All designs and images © Katja Ollendorff

Make it in Design Interview →

I am so pleased to share an interview on Make It in Design's Blog this morning that features yours truly! 

Click here to have a read.