Day 21 Folk Art – I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this one. This is probably my favorite from the whole month. Last year the barn quilt author and artist Suzi Parron came to speak at my mom’s quilt guild, and then we did a workshop with her as well, where we got to make our own barn quilts. My mom has been obsessed for years and it was so interesting to learn about them. The most fascinating thing being that they are a brand new art, as in this century! Don’t they seem like something that should have been around in Amish country for hundreds of years? This pattern is going to be made into a fabric, for sure!
Day 22 Bicycle – This pattern was kind of a cheat, in that I made it years and years ago, but I don’t think I ever shared it fully. Maybe I posted a pic of a bike or two, but never the full thing. I have even made little pinback buttons of the bike illustrations pictured here. I penciled in the bikes, then inked them, then painted very wet and loose watercolor around them. In case you don’t know, I love bikes. My own bicycle in particular, and if you haven’t heard it before, I have bought my same bike FOUR times because I love it so much!
Day 23 Pomegranate – When I think of pomegranates I think of my mom and how she seems to take pleasure it preparing a pomegranate. She’ll prepare everything, gathering the fruit, a bowl, a knife and towel, opening it up and peeling it and filling a bowl full of the juicy gem like fruit pebbles. I also think about how much I love pomegranate too, but have way less patience and thus end up buying Pom juice in the fun shaped bottles for a rare treat. This pattern is a nod to the fruit and the juice in an abstract form, in a little art book.
Day 24 Rain– If I remember correctly, I had a different plan for rain, but it didn’t really pan out, so last minute I just did this with my Aquash water brush pen, and navy blue watercolor, and finished it off with splatter, and voila. It’s one of those patterns, that I wish they all could all be so quick and easy-peasy.
Day 25 Black and White – Last year I won a set of Gelli Arts mini shaped plates, and this rectangle one was my absolute favorite. I decided to make a pattern using just black on white paper, with my hand cut paper stencils.
Day 26 Turquoise – I was trying to go for that silver and turquoise ring thing. Turned out more meh than I had hoped for.
Day 27 String – I thought of this picture of handspun yarn I made years and years ago from fiber I dyed with koolaid. This also turned out more meh than I had hoped for. 
Day 28 Floral– Floral is another one of those pattern themes that I would love to explore, more, more, more and more of! This was just a quick pattern that I imagine being reproduced on fabric, but in a way that is reduced so the pattern is fairly tiny.
Day 29 Kaleidoscope– This pattern started out from the picture on the bottom, and then I assembled into kaleidoscope circles on the top on the computer. It came out way more busy than I had envisioned. That is funny because I restarted once when I deemed the first pile of collage papers to be too plain and basic.
Day 30 Plaid – Last year I had the idea of making a greeting card for Christmas with “buffalo plaid” that I would make from loose watercolors. I never got around to it, so this theme let me finally make that pattern that I wanted to do.
Day 31 Fruit Salad – I’m pretty opinionated on my fruit salads. There are few things worse than ordering a fruit salad at a restaurant and when it arrives it is just cantelope, honeydew and a grape. That is NOT a fruit salad. Fruit salad needs to have a LOT of variety. I built this sketchy fruit salad pattern on the computer and I rather liked how it came out.
And here the full collection. At the end Anika asked people to answer a questionaire on how the month went:
- 1. My favorite pattern – the barns/barnquilts for the Folk Art theme for the detail and subject matter being close to my heart.
- 2. Favorite prompts – swan, home, and floral. These are prompts that made me overflow with ideas and I want to go back to them and do more, more, more. The swan and floral themes were ones in particular that I already had plans for in my head prior to starting patternjanuary.
- 3. Biggest challenge – sleep. It’s something that I struggle with regularly anyway. My natural sleep habits would have me up late because I’m most productive and creative late at night, but I have to work at 6 a.m. Last year I finally stopped fighting it and started going to bed around 9 p.m. but the week before January I was on vacation so I slept like I wanted, meaning up late. Then working on patterns, wanting to do them justice, I ended up staying up late furthering the bad sleep pattern. I have been surviving on little sleep for the month (and being late to work more often than not, as well 😱)
- 4. Most frustrating moment – had to be the times that I allowed myself to fall behind schedule because I was so overwhelmed by the prompts that I really wanted to do amazing stuff. I still haven’t finished the dollhouse pattern.
- 5. Most popular pattern – rain. Funny because it was one of the simplest and quickest patterns I made after my first idea flopped. But I have to say that almost all of my patterns this month out perform my average posts. Thank you everyone, for the support!
- 6. Biggest surprise – citrus. It felt like the biggest dud, especially since I was feeling so rusty AND because the picture of it was taken at night, but it got so many likes and comments.
- 7. Proudest moments – being featured on other accounts and people reaching out to me about future projects due to these patterns ❤
- 8. Patterns I want to redo – almost all of them need additional work, and as stated above the dollhouse one was never completed, and I want to do additional swan, house and floral patterns, but as for completely redoing, there aren’t any I’d scratch and start over.
- 9. Goals for next time – maybe stick within one medium? My pieces were all over the place from digital and hand drawn, to watercolor, and collage. Although I do think that allowing myself to mix it up helped me to stick it out. I worry that if I limited myself to one medium that I might get bored and throw in the towel. I just thought of another goal and that would be inspired by @jessee_artschooldropout who made her patterns, finalized them and then uploaded them to spoonflower all in one go. That is amazing.
- 10. Plans for February – catch up on all the things I neglected during January. I have so many things that I need to do that I’m a little overwhelmed where to begin. But number one should be to clean off my work table so I can get back to serious work
