Creating Surface Pattern Designs

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at creating surface pattern designs. What is surface pattern design, you might ask? It’s a skill in creating designs that are primarily used for fashion and home decor textiles, paper products, and much more. It is decoration for many surfaces that are all around us. Having a background of sewing and fashion and with my skills as a graphic designer, I thought I would give it a try.

In between my client work and while the world is in isolation due to the COVID 19 virus I have the opportunity to learn about surface pattern design via Skillshare  with a class by Bonnie Christine. 

If you have looked at my portfolio you may have noticed that I love flowers. I paint them, I  photograph them and I draw them. This practice is coming in very handy for surface pattern designs.

Below are my sketches of some random flowers that I have photographed and a few of those photos, as well.

Using Adobe Illustrator and my Wacom tablet I created vector illustrations from my sketches, gave them some color and then grouped them together in a pattern. I found my color combination from a book in my library called ‘The Designer’s Guide to Color Combinations’ by Leslie Cabarga. This combo came from the Art Deco section. I am very fond of Art Deco so that was a bonus find. Here is my first surface pattern design:

To see how this would look as a home decor pillow I mocked one up. Fabric is available at my Spoonflower shop here.

Then I played with another color combo and when enlarged this one looks pretty cool as a summer dress. That color way is
available at my Spoonflower shop here.

One more, a monochromatic version also looks nice as a home dec pillow that I mocked up too. As you can see there is no end to the options you can create.

I have a lot to learn in perfecting this skill but I have to say I’m very excited about it. It was really fun and the possibilities are endless and I love that!