Pattern Please Bundle Pushes Me Over the Edge

I’ve been trying to save this fabric goodness for a Sunday Stash post. However, due to its popularity, and all my fabrics trying to jump in at once, it’s going to have to step to the front of the chorus line and saaaang! That’s not really surprising as this Pattern Please bundle is the equivalent of A Star Is Born! It’s quite literally, my new favourite thing, as it screams, “Look at me!”

When Rita from Canadian shop, Fabric Please, approached me to work together back in April 2015 (<– that is not a typo), I immediately said, “I’d love to make a blogger bundle for you!” Then I promptly dropped the crystal ball, and got distracted with my weave collection. Fast forward to nearly a year and half later, and we finally got back together to work it out. Thank the heavens for the candy rain, because these patterned bits of colour are giving me direction in life!

When I say direction, I quite literally mean it. I have been in a small design rut, and I really needed something to jar my aesthetic system. That’s why I selected these patterned pieces, with varying notes of scale. I knew they would challenge me to work in unfamiliar territory, with an unfamiliar palette. Violet! Such a derided colour, but I want to make you love it! Most of the violet hues in this bundle lean to the tertiary colour, red-violet, so when I was auditioning “neutral” fabrics from my stash, I opted for Art Gallery Pure Element “Cabernet.” (So close to cabaret, and even closer to wine! What’s not to love!?)

With that, I started making. I made an overly-ambitious amount of HSTs, before deciding that I didn’t want to use them at all in this project. Then I let out a few silent screams, trying to shake the design doldrums out of my system. Because here’s the truth tea: designing isn’t always unicorns and rainbows. You sometimes have to walk along a dark path to get to the light. And now I feel like I’m getting there.

You probably haven’t seen much improvisational piecing around here. That’s because I rarely do it. Which is exactly why it needed to be done. Much like choosing uncomfortable patterns and colours, I decided to try an uncomfortable technique to kickstart the design process again. Now, do I have any idea where this is going? Not a Nancy Drew style clue. But I’m having hella fun cutting loose, and just letting the beauty of the fabrics and shapes speak to me. It grows a little bit more each day, and I have my beautiful Pattern Please bundle to keep me in the spotlight.

If you need a kickstart to your own inspiration, or you just love lots of pattern (or name drops like Tula Pink, Joel Dewberry and Zandra Rhodes!) then you can head to Fabric Please and you’ll find it for sale here. I started my own hashtag #patternpleasebundle on Instagram, so if you make something with yours, make sure you add it to the collection! Finally, if you’re finding inspiration troubles, walk away and try something new. You’ll get back to where you need to be, and the detour will be like a breath of fresh air!