I Love Puppies Strike-Offs

A few weeks ago I shared a sneak peek at my new fabric line “I Love Puppies”.

At that point, I only had the cad drawings and have been anxiously awaiting the strike-offs (where the designs are printed on actual fabrics).  The second set of strike-offs have arrived and I have gone through them and made some notes on a few more tweaks.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this process, the plant does a few practice runs on fabric before they print the real goods.  This way we have a chance to get the colors just right.  I compare the strike-offs to my artwork or the cads and make notes on what I want changed.  I email these changes to my design director at Henry Glass and Co, who then sends them to the plant overseas.   This is where I imagine some interpreter trying to explain my notes – such as “The designer wants the pink to be a little less mauve in tone, and a little more coral.”   I often wonder if those colors mean the same thing to me, as they do to the person running the ink mixing machine???  I need to ask my design director  about this sometime.  It sounds like a challenging process!

My list is usually long and detailed, as I am trying to get things just right, if possible.  Then when the fabric comes, I often have to let a few of the details slide.  I remind myself that I notice things that other people won’t and they won’t have the original to compare it to.  It’s hard not to be critical of your own work, but usually within a few days, I am playing away with the new fabrics, minor differences forgotten.

I am getting off track – so back to the point of this blog post!  Here is the sneak peek at those strike-offs:

The brown and orange prints –

The grey prints, including the panel –

The aquas and the cream background print-

The navy and green prints –

And one last shot of how nicely the grey and aquas play together.

It will be a few more months before I get the actual fabric.  In the meantime, I already have a quilt pattern picked out that I want to make with the fabric.  It’s always such a long wait!

So what are you playing with today?