I find when I’m searching for inspiration for patterns or textiles I often start by looking at objects rather than the actual patterns on things. I love to find a collection of objects with a similar purpose or hand that I can group together to discover a new shape or texture. Here’s one of my recent inspirational collections:

Children’s Illustrations:

On the heels of my Pebeo Pen project, here’s some more inspiration. Tom Seidmann Freud was a woman, and, yes a relative of the Sigmund Freud. She died young, suicide, after her husband’s career failure. You can read more here.

Aren’t these beautiful? They are mostly children’s storybook illustrations, but I love how they have a natural narrative quality that makes the idea of words seem non-essential. The fifth image today is not from Tom Seidmann Freud, but these German Christmas ornaments seemed like they could be characters in her illustrations, don’t you think?

By Kimberly Hall