Last year in the summer I worked on creating two patterns for DMC that they recently launched as part of their designer kit collection. I really enjoyed working on creating the two patterns and would love to share a bit about the design process and the ideas for the designs.
In June I visited my sister for a week. She lives in Canada and it was an incredibly special time to fly away from home responsibilities and spend time with her and other family that I don't often get to see. I had just received a brief from DMC with the request to collaborate on two kits and was able to design these in such a joyful relaxing way. I had some ideas in my head and had a bit of time before I had to get back to them with concrete patterns, so I took along fabric, put together colour combinations and just worked on sketching with thread.
I celebrated my birthday at my aunt's house, where she baked my choice of cake, and sitting there, surrounded by family and love I felt how I was slowly unwinding after months of stress and pressure. Both patterns are about that oasis and are created as a tribute, the living room is based on hers, and the bedroom was inspired by the room where I slept, a converted pump house with the peonies in full bloom outside the window.
I learned to quilt from my aunt and knew I wanted to include quilts in both designs. Last year I discovered the bottensöm stitch, a Swedish stitch used to fill large areas with different colours and pulled threads to create texture. I've used this in two of my other designs to create bedspreads and love how I can follow the curves of the blanket to create depth and texture. I used this for one of the quilts and plain satin stitch for the other. I also incorporated lots of texture stitches, which I find so fun to do and which add a lot of interest to the stitching process and the finished product.
Once I was home from my trip I spent some delightful mornings sitting in the garden in the sun stitching the samples. I ended up starting both designs again, changing some things and refining colours and the placement of the design. I added a light wallpaper to the bedroom design based on a pattern of the flowers that were blooming around me.
It was a very enjoyable experience focusing just on the design process (DMC creates and sells the kits and wrote the instructions, although I was involved in giving feedback and provided videos of some of the more complex stitches).
If you make one of these two kits, I hope that some of that feeling of comfort and joy I experienced while designing them will spill over into your own making!