From Beginner to 100 Designs: My Year in Surface Pattern Design

I am celebrating my first year as a surface pattern designer. I made over 100 designs (reaching my goal of 100) and recently had my first Spoonflower fabric sales!!

A year ago, I discovered surface pattern design. It was a life changing moment. I just couldn’t believe I spent all this time not knowing it existed. I immediately felt a pull, a connection and a feeling like I found a missing piece of my heart, a part of my heart that I never knew to uncover. I know this sounds sappy, but it was something like that.

So here’s how it started and how I spent my first year as a surface pattern designer, balancing it with a full-time career and being a mom.

February 2021:

Took Bonnie Christine’s free mini course in surface pattern design and made my first repeat pattern. I was really interested in Immersion after that but the price tag made me hesitate. I also was so new to it, I wanted to be sure it wasn’t just a passing crush. I also did a little sleuthing and I found a more affordable school taught by Rachael Taylor called Make it in Design, a design school based in the UK. When I saw Bonnie was a past graduate, that intrigued me.

March 2021:

Enrolled in a Florals and Nature surface pattern design course at Make it in Design that just happened to be on sale for $40. This Florals course was beautiful and perfect for an introduction to surface pattern design. It was enough to get me started.

Opened my Spoonflower and Society6 shops. I also tried out the Print on demand company, Art of Where based in Canada. I then added some Art of Where products to an Etsy shop.

Registered a domain name (not what I have now) and I started a WordPress website which I am still using. It is the most affordable option at $4.00 a month. I designed the website in less than one day from my phone. So I think WordPress is pretty easy to use.

Ordered some of my first designs on fabric and on products! This was the most exciting thing! There’s something addictive about seeing your own designs on a product.

Sewed a few baby dresses with my Hot Pink Koala and Rainbows and Koala in Pink fabric from Spoonflower and gave some as gifts for Easter.

Joined the Make it in Design community, the Live Hub. I stayed for 3 months. I really enjoyed it but at the time I was just testing it out for the short term.

Started an Instagram (@pattern_babe)-I was reluctant to start this because I had quit social media the year prior. But in the Live Hub they really encouraged designers to use it to share their work. So I started with 0 followers. I’m also doing surface pattern design without telling most people I know yet. Usually most have no idea what I’m talking about when I do.

April 2021:

Enrolled in the Make it in Design School -3 modules, and started module 1. One thing I like about Make it in Design is that their sales make it really affordable.

Joined Bonnie Christine’s Flourish membership and I found the library of lessons so helpful. I felt like I filled a lot of gaps by being a member. I also found the monthly accountability posts to be helpful and it was neat that they would check in with you on a personal level about your progress. I even received feedback on one of my designs that improved it for printing. Additionally, I learned about copyrighting my designs with the U.S. Copyright Office. They are also amazing at answering your questions and Bonnie even answered my copyright questions in her live Q&A. I wasn’t sure if it would be strange to join Flourish without doing Immersion but it was still helpful although I did feel like the only one that didn’t do Immersion. I sometimes wonder if I am the only surface pattern designer in the US that hasn’t done Immersion yet.

May 2021:

I left the Live Hub to keep costs down since joining Flourish.

Started using Zazzle as a POD. In the Live Hub I learned about the plug-in for Adobe Photoshop called Adobe Design to Print! This was a lot of fun!

Got an equipment upgrade, a Wacom Cintiq. I was still enrolled as a student in grad school for a certificate program and I was glad to get a student discount through Wacom directly.

June 2021:

Created the snowflake design for my toddler’s Frozen birthday party in September.

July 2021:

I joined Make it in Design Summer School. All three Summer School tracks were included in the 3 modules I took so I figured I would try it since it was included. This was one of the best experiences I have had as a new designer. My designs never won or got featured but I felt like it pushed me to design to a trend brief and this brought out some of my most interesting and favorite designs. The community on Instagram is also very supportive and it helped me to gain new followers or follow those who were also part of the Summer School and many who are based around the world. You also get mockups to download and backgrounds you can use in your designs which was helpful for me as a new designer.

I registered my new domain name, patternbabe.com and Pattern Babe was born!! I felt like the baby designs no longer fit me and I was excited for this new brand name! I changed my Instagram to @pattern_babe.

Ordered Frozen birthday party invites, party plates and gift tags with my snowflakes design, mailed out the cards and excited for this new way to utilize my design skills!!

August 2021:

Mostly prepping for my daughter’s upcoming birthday party!

Continued to learn and make patterns.

September 2021:

Daughter’s Frozen birthday party using my snowflake surface pattern design.

Continued to learn and go through modules in Flourish and Make it in Design school.

October 2021:

Spent time trying to learn how to get my website to rank in Google search. It wasn’t coming up in the search and I didn’t want to pay to upgrade my WordPress site.

I successfully got it to rank as the top result when searching Pattern Babe.

November 2021:

Joined the Creative Powerhouse Society, includes a peer group, weekly prompts and it has been a great experience.

December 2021:

Left Flourish to keep costs down due to joining the Creative Powerhouse Society. I also completed most of the content in Flourish that I was interested in learning. I still think Flourish is great but I am trying to be mindful of not having too many expenses starting out.

Designed gift tags for the holidays and a holiday card

Got an upgrade to equipment and an iPad pro/apple pencil! Yay!!!

January 2022:

Completed and graduated from Make it in Design- completed all 3 modules

Learned how to scale down my patterns, before this I only had one scale-large!

Organized my files

Tested out Adobe Illustrator and Procreate on the iPad

Testing out SkillShare on a free trial-how did I not try this earlier?

February 2022:

Had my first few Spoonflower sales and have 186 designs (some private, some public, and some for sale)

Working on my Winter School designs-enrolled in Beginner and Intermediate–Love the Dark Romance trend brief the best and my Gothic Romance design (as pictured above).

Entered the Very Peri Spoonflower design challenge using the Pantone color of the year

Joined Evolution membership to learn about historical motives/patterns, love the drawing exercises broken down by beginner, novice, etc. So helpful!

Figuring out what to do next and setting some goals

…and beyond:

Continuing to do one thing a day and I’m excited for what is coming next! You can continue to follow my journey, follow me on Instagram @pattern_babe or subscribe to my newsletter and receive a free weekly planner download, which is the one I use to stay on track.

Don’t forget to grab your free download! A beautiful printable weekly planner sheet!