My niece drew this picture of a sewing machine for me. Her message “Don’t miss the sniff” is to let me know that not only is there a scratch and sniff sticker there, but she drew it using smelly markers. Important stuff when you are 4. I am in love with this picture.
“Kid art” is a really hard thing to translate into fabric design. And honestly, I look at pretty much everything anymore and think “How can I make fabric out of this?” So I wanted to capture this fabulous drawing in fabric.
via gofugyourself.com
The new fall line for Dolce & Gabbana offers this. Which I honestly think is hideous. If you click that photo it will take you to a whole slide show of their runway show, which has a whole collection of “kid art” prints. They all look like they are printed on shiny satin besides, which also doesn’t make any sense. Formal crayon wear? Ugh.
So instead of trying to go with a literal interpretation, I decided to use Mia’s drawing as inspiration instead.
So, I drew the sewing machine and all of the other doo-dads and shapes in Illustrator, making it into a vector design so I could rearrange, resize and so on to make a repeat. This one is about 18″ because I wanted it to be big and bold. I wanted some textures to overlay on designs like this, so a few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon making fibery textures. This one is perfect for this design. I also used Mia’s drawing for the color inspiration. I think my version has enough pink in it for her to approve.
I don’t see this is a clothing fabric (although she would probably wear it) so I decided to think of it like a craft/quilting fabric instead, which meant I wanted to have a collection of coordinating prints to go along with it. Solids with the same fibery texture, “cheerios” and little banner flags so far. I think I need one more. Any ideas?
I know it is sewing machines (and you do now too), but I think this also could look like tribal/tiki/monster as I can see a few faces in there. And that also works for me.