Revisiting my Little Birdies
Way back when I used to upcycle ceramics, I often drew this little birdie motif. I loved drawing them so much that the birdies ended up on most of my pieces. People must have liked looking at the birdies as much as I liked drawing them because the dishes featuring my little birdies sold like hotcakes.
My little birdie motif became so popular that I ended up designing some invitations based off of it.
Then I designed some birdie fabric…
Little Birdies fabric (2010) Zippy bag with Little Birdies fabric (2010)
…but I was never quite happy with the design or the colorway.
I decided to crack open my little birdies fabric pattern for some revisions.
My original little birdie fabric designs:
My updated little birdie fabric designs:
The original design was really flat because I was afraid to use a color for the background. At the time I designed the original fabric, I had just started working with patchwork and hadn’t really delved into the love of fabric design/designers that I have now.
I really love this season’s Pantone color forecast swatches, so I used those as a starting point for my color palette. Here are a few more of my updated designs.
Even though I didn’t like the white background on the original designs, I ended up doing a white background on the version with all the colors of birds because it was too overwhelming to have a background color. My favorite little bird is the purple birdwith the dark orange beak.
Do you ever revisit creative projects?
I’m glad that I revisited this project! I’m much happier with it now, and I may even expand this design into a few other patterns in the near future!
