Creating a Border Print

Not long ago, I wrote a blog about how I get inspiration for fabric designs. At that time, I talked about looking at artwork from various design houses. This week I want to expand on that and talk about my border print designs which I do for each collection.

I create most of my border designs from different pieces of interesting art.  For instance, this floral paisley design is part of my Chelsea fabric collection. There are so many interesting images to work with in this design.

To create a border, I select an area, copy it, and make a new file. Then I manipulate, mirror, stretch, compress, etc. I just literally play with the elements until I find something that I like.

All of my borders have a narrow stripe and a wide one with space in between large enough to allow for seam allowance. I create the wider stripe first, then the narrow.

This photo shows many of the designs I achieved by manipulating the image.

Once I have the two stripes that I’m pleased with I have to make sure that they fit within the “repeat” allowed for screen printing. I also have to be sure that the elements between the stripes line up just right, so sometimes one of the stripes has to be scaled differently or stretched or compressed.

Here is the final border print that I created from that floral image.

And that is just the design.  Then it’s on to working on the different colors. My Chelsea collection has border prints in nine different colorways. Phew! How do you think they look?