Showing the Work: I’m building my portfolio this week!

It has been a looong time since I’ve put together a portfolio. For the 12 years that I was producing my own fabrics I really didn’t have time to pick up any other work, and if anyone wanted to see my designs, I just directed them to my website. But it is finally time for me to expand beyond fabric, and I need to have my work in a format that can show other potential uses. Enter the portfolio!

For the past week or so I’ve been trying hard to stay focused in my office (despite the incredible weather, which has been luring me out every couple hours for garden breaks). I’ve been brushing up on InDesign, making mock-ups and trying to pull my work together into some kind of organized and cohesive presentation. There’s a lot of it! It’s actually been pretty interesting to look at all of the collections at once and see the way the designs have changed over time. One of the things you hear constantly when putting together a portfolio is that your work needs to have a clear and consistent voice. I have often worried that mine doesn’t, because I use different media and styles, sometimes painterly and sometimes flat and graphic. But when I look at it all together, I can see a consistent point of view, and my inspiration points are clear (mostly plants and animals :).

Once I get it done, I’ll have a link to it on the website and you can check it out. I’ve also been thinking of adding a collection archive of some sort, or a place where all the older out-of-print patterns can live. I’m not sure it’s necessary, but it’s fun to look back at them, anyway. But first, the portfolio!