finalist

This is the seventh and penultimate in our series of profiles of the eight finalists in the Fabric8 contest, a competition from Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics to discover a handful of the world's best amateur textile designers. Today we're featuring artist and designer Linda Mahoney. Enjoy, and look for our final interview post at the end of the week!

Butterflygarden by Mahoneybee, Linda Mahoney

I was born in Texas, USA, and now I split my time between Texas and New Mexico. I spend a lot of my time doing different types of artwork and taking photos. You can see an online art gallery of my work here. Spending time with my husband, family and our miniature schnauzer gives me utmost joy. Sneaking in a little time to read or listen to audio books while painting fills in the cracks.

I’ve always admired fabric and wallpaper designs and thought I would love to try my hand at it. I got a BFA in commercial art, but that was in the era BC (before computers). I am self-taught on the computer and am always looking for different challenges and opportunities to expand my artwork. I first found Spoonflower through a search engine about a year ago, and tried coming up with a few ideas, but the repeats were (and still are) somewhat of a problem for me. I didn’t get brave enough to put something out there until now.

I don’t sew and have decided to leave that to my friends who amaze me with those skills. My arts and crafts room threatens to consume me, so I keep trying to limit myself. I’m a signature member of the Colored Pencil Society of America and do free-lance artwork.

It’s so hard to narrow the field, but I loved reading The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene as an all-time favorite and more recently Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Temple Grandin and Crosscreek are two of my favorite movies.  I like way too many different types of music to pick just a few favorites and the same with artists, but when it comes to fabric design, I'm inspired by William Morris and Kaffe Fassett and like to review the work of Klimt, Monet and the living artist, Joseph Raffael, from time to time.

My reaction to being in the Fabric8 top 100 was shock, and then becoming one of the 8 finalists was beyond shocking as well as humbling. I saw some beautiful, amazing work by incredibly talented designers in the top 100. Honestly, I have always been leery of contests that involve voting because I assumed you only had a chance if you had a giant and loyal social network. (A lot of my friends don’t have a clue how to navigate the Internet to even vote!) I was at home doing a quick check of email before 5:00 a.m. before I joined a friend to walk and I read it then.  It jolted me right awake and I’m still smiling about it!

Linda's winning fabric design is in the middle, between two photos
she used as inspiration for the painting.

When I saw the theme of watercolor, pen and ink, I thought I wanted to create something a little loose to convey the feel of watercolor and include just a bit of pen and ink. I’m usually very technical with my artwork, so that was a stretch for me. I tried drawing out the elements first, but that felt too constrained, so I just did free hand work. I wanted to keep the colors bright and clear, too. I love flowers and thought of the light airy petals of poppies.

I have some ideas to develop for the rest of the collection but am not committed to them yet. I’ve been putting different colors together and am not sure which direction I will ultimately go with it.  I especially like paisleys and plaids and will probably include at least one of those in my final collection.

Butterfly Garden by mahoneybee, Fabric8 finalist

This is the sixth in our series of profiles of the eight finalists in the Fabric8 contest, a competition from Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics to discover a handful of the world's best amateur textile designers. Today we're profiling Canadian designer Tamara Serrao. Look for our penultimate Fabric8 designer profile tomorrow!

Dappled Migration by Kayajoy, Tamara Serrao

I was born in northern Ontario but when I was 4, my family sailed to Trinidad to live. There I grew up exploring the outdoors in a sunny and colourful environment. I left Trinidad to come back to Canada at age 17 but tropical birds, insects, fish, and flora were an enormous part of my younger years and remain ever present in my memories and imagination. Today I live in Montreal, where I long for the colour and warmth of summer for far too many months of the year.

I have a bachelors degree in art, with a major in textiles and a minor in art history. While in school, however, my main focus was in weaving. It wasn’t until last year, after many years of not being involved in textiles to any great degree, that my sister introduced me to Spoonflower and I quickly became addicted to the design process. I set myself the goal of entering as many of the weekly contests as I could manage so as to push my boundaries aesthetically and technically. I have learned so much through this exercise.

When I’m not designing fabric, I'm either at work designing packaging and labels, trying to cook an interesting meal (I stress “trying”), or being creative with my kids. In the summer I love being on our rooftop deck, planting beautifully coloured flowers in every available spot and enjoying the fresh air and sky.

I grew up with a mom who sewed most of our clothes. Delving into fabric shops, bags of ribbons, boxes of buttons, and stacks of patterns are some of my earliest distinct memories. I learned to sew at a very young age and have gone through phases of fervent stitching, embroidery, quilting or knitting when the inspiration has hit.

My favorite period has been the anticipation of and first years of my children’s lives. I still have the quilt my grandmother made for me when I was a baby and I wanted my kids to each have that tactile keepsake of their own. In typical parenting fashion, my firstborn’s was pretty much finished before she was born.

But my son’s quilt was only finished a couple of months ago. (He is now 4.)

I also enjoy making baby clothes because the scale is perfect for me. I get a great sense of accomplishment from such adorable, small, quickly finished projects.

Having two young children, I read a lot of kids’ books. Some of my favorites are Where the Wild Things Are, Iggy Peck Architect, Grandpa Green, and The Red Shoes. I derive so much inspiration from ideas and styles of illustration in our younger home library. My favorite musician at the moment is Michael Kiwanuka. His voice is spellbinding. As for fabric designers, that’s a tough one to narrow down. There is quite a range for me, from Amy Butler to Kate Spain to Lizzie House to Skinny Laminx.  My list of favorites goes on and on.  Probably due to the fact that my own work is usually quite detailed & controlled, I'm really enjoying the paintings of Lulie Wallace and Michelle Armas right now.

I was completely ecstatic when I learned that I was one of the Fabric8 finalists. I had just flown into Halifax in the late morning to spend some time with my mom and dad. Not being one of the most technologically advanced individuals around, it took me a good hour to get wi-fi running on my laptop. My email was the first thing I checked and there at the top was a message from Stephen saying I was in. I literally squealed with delight!

I would say that 95% of my fabric design work thus far has been created using Illustrator. I am a self-taught computer graphist and have been learning as I go. I have, however, been wanting to get back to drawing and painting for some time now, so the Fabric8 contest was just what I’ve been waiting for. It hasn’t been as easy as I'd thought it would be, though. It's literally been half a lifetime since I’ve used watercolours, so I've gone through whole days of sketching, drawing with technical pens, experimenting with paint, scanning, manipulating with Photoshop, and then starting all over again from scratch the following day. I think I'm finally on track, and I'm creating a collection based on sunlight and wind with fantastical patterned butterflies being the main characters. As always, colour and pattern are driving me.

Dappled Migration by Kayajoy, Fabric8 finalist

This is the fifth in our series of profiles of the eight finalists in the Fabric8 contest, a competition from Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics to discover a handful of the world's best amateur textile designers. Today we're featuring Australian designer Julie Lynch. Enjoy, and look for our sixth interview post on Monday!

The Scented Garden by CJLDesigns, Julie Lynch

I've always lived in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia.  I grew up in the town of Lobethal which is known for its German heritage and wonderful bakery, and also as the home for many years of the Onkaparinga Woollen Mill. I currently live with my husband and our two boys ages 6 and 7 in a little house in Littlehampton.

I work as a graphic designer in children’s wear and, apart from designing prints and embroideries and doing technical illustrations and croquis, I also design some yardage prints. I was so happy to find Spoonflower because I love patterns and putting things into repeat.  I do enjoy my work but it's also great to have the freedom to work on designs that are all my own. I've been at Spoonflower for just over a year now and was very excited to hear about Fabric8.

When I'm not working on fabric designs, I love to go driving.  Actually my husband does the driving as I haven't got my license yet. (I've been putting that off for many years now.) We like exploring places we've never been before with the kids or going to favourite places we have been, and doing a lot of photography along the way. I also enjoy going to lots of little markets in search of interesting bits and pieces for our many collections.

I don't sew on a machine so unfortunatley the only sewing I do at the moment is hand-sewing costumes for the kids or attempting to mend clothes (which often need mending after I've finished with them). I would love to make a quilt or two and learn to crochet properly. Before I had children, I made lots of handmade bears from mohair and old coats and I enjoyed making my own sewing patterns.

I also really enjoy printmaking.  I enjoyed a lino-printing workshop I took recently and have also done etching and screen-printing.

I'm really drawn to illustration and have many favourite illustrators, some of whom are also talented designers on Spoonflower. A few of my favourite children’s book illustrators include Graeme Base and Pamela Allen, and I love the beautiful work of Christopher Wormell.

I have to say that watercolour does not come naturally to me so when working on my design for this contest, I wanted to do something that had strong line work with the texture of water colour. I love working with natural motifs like flowers and birds and I'm looking forward to expanding on this theme for the collection. 

Living in Australia, the time difference means that the contest winners normally go up around 1:00 a.m. Friday morning. I was feeling a little nervous before the finalists were announced so I thought I'd just go to sleep and check when I woke in the morning. After finally dropping off around 12:30 a.m., I woke up again about an hour later, checked the finalist results, and was so excited to find my design in the finals that I couldn’t go back to sleep until around 4 a.m.!