Investing in Myself

Digital surface design done in Adobe Illustrator based on a leaf shape that I constantly doodle.

Almost 50 years ago, I packed up my belongings and left a small upstate New York town and headed for the big city to pursue my dream of becoming a textile designer. I had found a fabulous program at FIT that zipped you through the textile program in a year if you already had a college degree. So, I learned how to draw and paint textile designs and put them in repeat. We had no computers. No color Xerox. No scanner that could enlarge or reduce a design. We had tracing paper, a T-square, and a ruler. It was probably the happiest year of my life.

One of my first textile designs, done in 1977, hand screen printed

After FIT, I took a job working for a small textile converter. Converters own the fabric and the screens or rollers that print the fabric, but not the factory. It was great fun. I got to travel a lot, meet all kinds of clothing manufacturers, and select hundreds of designs from freelance artists.

Scans of hand-painted artwork from my FIT portfolio (top) and from a 1980s fabric design (bottom). 

That all changed when I decided to stay home with my daughter until she was old enough to go to school. Right before she entered kindergarten, my husband said the magic words: "honey, you're the smartest person I know..." and asked me to help him with his newspaper business. I learned how to use a little mac computer, then took QuarkXPress so I could help with the newspaper layout design. I loved layout design and worked for his newspaper and then the NYC Health & Hospitals for many years.

"Roses in my Head" painting, used for fabric sold at Spoonflower.com.

By the time my daughter was in high school and I though about reentering the textile business, it had all changed. The garment center had shrunk; manufacturers were working overseas. My industry contacts had either gone out of business or gone digital. I started doing art quilting and mixed media work. I got a few things in books, magazines, and shows. I had some stencil designs accepted at StencilGirl Products, and kept busy making samples with them and artwork incorporating my stencils. But a little voice in my head said "I want to design fabrics."

"Dreaming of Fashion" art quilt, published in Quilting Arts magazine.

"Eye of Panic" art quilt, published in the books Quilts & Health, Quilts in the Attic, Machine Quilting Magazine and shown at Sacred Threads quilt show.

A couple years ago I took a free online course in using Adobe Illustrator for surface design. It was hard. It was confusing. I made a few designs. They were ok...not what I knew I wanted to produce, but passable.

Repeating pattern for surface design, done with Adobe Illustrator in 2022.

A few weeks ago I saw another freebie for Bonnie Christine's free week of instruction for Adobe Illustrator for surface design and gave it another try. BUTttttt, my computer died. I couldn't install Illustrator. It froze up. I wanted to cry. I watched all videos while waiting for my new computer to arrive, but I couldn't participate or practice. I did realize that the program didn't scare me as much as it used to. In my day job, I have been working in Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and this time, looking at Adobe Illustrator's tools and menus, it didn't seem so foreign or undoable. 

SOOOOO, I this weekend I invested in myself twice: 

1) I bought a really, really, really nice desktop computer with a huge screen and lots of memory ANNNND 

2) I "bit the bullet" and signed up for the very pricey Immersion course from Bonnie Christine.

I am taking a leap of faith and a lot of deep breaths, and am hoping that all the patterns and colors that I see inside my head can be channeled through my fingers, onto the keyboard, and into the design program. Fingers crossed that with my new equipment and new skills, I can finally make the fabric collections I have been dreaming about for years!