New Fabric Collection: Reflections

I’m so excited to introduce my newest collection, Reflections, for Riley Blake Designs. Reflections arrives in stores in January 2022. I’m not the best at keeping secrets, so I am very relieved to finally be able to share this collection with you!

This collection is inspired by my love of collecting American depression glass. I’ve always been fascinated by the colors and the patterns featured on the glassware. In the 1920s and 1930s American glass companies began manufacturing beautiful colored glassware. It was inexpensive and sold in Five and Dimes and often used as promotional giveaways during the great depression. I wanted the patterns to have a wink and a nod to the patterns featured on some of my favorite depression glass patterns.

The cherries and lemons are a nod to a beautiful lemonade set that I found in a little antique store in Minnesota in my 20s. I still regret not buying the beautiful pink pitcher and matching lemonade glasses featuring little cherries and cherry blossoms. One of my favorite blenders is called Clover Leaf which is my mom’s favorite pattern. I still remember feeling so fancy when we used the little footed sherbet bowls for desserts.

I’m also so excited to release my very first quilt pattern. It’s also named Reflections and finishes at 54” x 75”.

While it’s so sad that Quilt Market is virtual again this year, it’s fun to be able to give more people a peek at what fabric collections are coming in 2022. I also never would have brought my depression glass to quilt market, so that’s a bonus. I’m so excited to see this collection out in the world. Make sure to tag me or email me pictures if you use it in a project. Seeing how other people use the fabric is my most favorite part!

Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge - Dizzy Pinwheel

I’m so excited to share my block for the Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge! I am calling this one the dizzy pinwheel and I think it turned out super cute and it is also beginner friendly!! (Is that because I’m still a beginner quilter and maybe always will be? Maybe…try not to judge me.)

My favorite thing about this block is that you can use the eight at a time Half Square Triangle method to make ALL the half square triangles you need, so this block comes together super quick! If you give this block a try, I would love to see it and admire all of your work! Make sure to tag me on social media @laurenbrewerdesign.

You can visit the Riley Blake Designs website to get instructions for all of the blocks so far! There’s still time to catch up!

Click the quilt block below to download PDF instructions!

Introducing A New Day

I’m so excited to share my latest pattern collection with you! This collection is called “A New Day,” and it’s inspired by my children. This school year has been a rough one - both kids started new schools and have had a few more bad days than what they’re used to. From the time they were little - probably too little to understand - I would say “tomorrow is a new day.” I love the fresh start that a new day brings and I hope that I brought that feeling to life with this collection. The collection definitely has a youthful feel, but I tried to mix in some sophisticated touches that would appeal to young and maybe the young at heart as well.

If you’d like to see more patterns from this collection - pop on over to my Patterns page and take a look around! I will also post some fun mock-ups over on my Instagram page!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Introducing Persistence

I’m so proud to introduce my newest pattern collection, Persistence. This collection came together unlike any in the past. I literally mindlessly sketched out the crane and from there envisioned more than half of the rest of the collection. I chose “persist” as my word of 2019 and designed my first pattern for this collection based on that word. Cranes often represent eternal life and good fortune in many cultures and I felt like the crane was a lovely symbol of persistence. For me 2018 was all about learning and growing in my art practice, but 2019 is persisting in that practice and not only that - but it’s time to SHOW MY WORK. That feels scary and honestly I get butterflies in my stomach when I hit publish on my website or even Instagram. It’s rough sometimes, so Persistence speaks to all of that. For me it shows my growth as an artist, but still stays true to my style and perspective.

The color ways in Persistence are moodier than my previous collections, which I’m sure is a reflection of designing them in the midst of a very gloomy February here in Texas. I hope you love them as much as I do, and even though the four patterns featured below are only a small portion of the entire collection - I have lots more peeks coming. I will be featuring more patterns from the collection over on my Instagram page, so make sure to follow along if you are interested.

I created little video of me creating my “Scattered Petals” pattern. It is sped up because even though I love to spend an hour (ok…hours sometimes depending on the pattern) working on a pattern - I’m not sure how compelling that would be to watch. The little petals from I used for this and a few other patterns - are all the insides of the little leaf motif I created. (You can see it above in the logo for Persistence.)

Creating photo mockups is one of my most favorite ways to bring my patterns to life. It’s like magic to see something I sketched out come to life on products. Here are a few peeks…

Retreat & Persist

Finding your place in the world is a big concept, but I swear that I’ve found mine in the surface pattern design community - specifically, the wonderful women that Bonnie Christine brought together for the first annual Surface Pattern Design Immersion Course Retreat. We came together from all over - women of all different ages and backgrounds - all of us at different points in our creative journeys and spent a few days building each other up. It’s hard to put into words what this time meant to me. It was so lovely to be away from everything and as much as I was ready to get home to my family - I wasn’t ready to actually leave the retreat if that makes sense. It was amazing to get away from the day to day and focus on creating this business with similarly minded women.

The farmhouse at The Prairie in Roundtop.

Photo by Callie Lynch

Bonnie asked us all to pick out a word for the coming year and we could emboss it onto a little piece of leather. At first I was going to choose persevere but I didn’t really want to have to emboss that many letters, so I shortened it to persist. I knew that the hard part of this journey for me is to keep going - even when things aren’t going great or there’s a lull in activity. As I suspected, reality hit HARD when I got home. I left the retreat so positive and excited about the future but slowly over the rest of the month I honestly lost some of that positivity. I tend to be an all or nothing kind of person in everything I do, which honestly is pretty detrimental to all aspects of my life but especially to any creative pursuits. If I want to work out - I feel like I should work out EVERY single day and if I miss two or three days, it’s so hard to get back into it. If I try to go on a diet - I am much better about just eliminating certain foods than having things in moderation. If I’m in the middle of designing a collection that’s all I want to do. The problem comes in when other things get in the way - not even big things - little things like a kid with strep throat, a stressful phone call, someone else’s crummy day, my own crummy day - every day “problems” big or small tend to completely knock me off course.

Photo by Callie Lynch

Obviously I can’t live in a bubble, so here are five things I’m working on to conquer this all or nothing mindset once and for all.

1. Pursue LOTS of creative outlets. I don’t have to just draw - I can do all the creative things I enjoy and not only is that ok - it will help my design process to be a well rounded person. I love to bake and embroider and read and it’s ok to do all of those things. It’s even ok to sketch and draw with no agenda.

2. Set “office hours.” I keep saying that I’m going to do this, but I am focusing on creating a better schedule for myself over the coming months. I need to set some hours for myself and try to stick to them - BUT also remember that the biggest bonus to being able to work from home is that I am allowed to be flexible - if I need to switch up the schedule now and then it’s OK.

3. Incorporate mental AND physical health. I started consistently working out in August for the first time…ever. I even got to the point where I enjoyed it, but then I got sick and kids got sick and I fell off the wagon completely. My plan is to get out of bed a little earlier and workout before I drop the kids off at school, so then I have more time in my day. BUT - instead of only doing one kind of workout - I’m going to try and incorporate some more quiet stretching and meditation.

4. Take social media breaks. While building an online presence is a necessary aspect of building a brand, it’s not my most favorite. I have major anxiety about posting…What should I post? What should the caption say? Is this stupid? Who cares about this? Not exactly conducive to a calm mind - so I am going to really work on finding an app to help with scheduling out posts and THEN focus on taking time away from Instagram so I can not only make better use of my time, but not let comparison creep in to my thoughts.

5. Take a class. There are so many things that I want to learn and frankly need to learn. I want to find a few more art classes and I’d like to get more comfortable in Photoshop as well. Over the coming year I am going to try and become as comfortable in Adobe Photoshop as I am in Illustrator. I also find that learning something new helps maintain a growth mindset and helps to offset some of the doubt that creeps in from time to time.

What do you do to get out of a funk and take care of yourself?