BEHIND THE SCENE : SOFTWARE (part 2)

Lately I have been working on paper piecing Flying Geese designs.

The fact of creating a triangle repeated and ending up making a circle needs to be done thanks to certain functions of Illustrator.

While searching through different videos, I discovered lots of new functions, some I might never use but others have been very useful in my work.

There is a software available to create patchwork designs, Electric Quilt 8, but I like to play around with my shapes without having a set grid, so I will continue using Illustrator.

During my cross stitch designer years, I did use the cross stitch software, I had Patternmaker and I loved it but believe me when I say that I started by using Excel and putting the letter "X" in the boxes to represent the stitches. Mostly I printed out my blank grid with Excel and then I would fill in the boxes with a pencil. Those were the days!!

Now we have computers that allow us to work professionally just from our homes, I love spending hours on my screen seeing my mind run wild and coming up with really amazing shapes and filling them out with loads of colors. And then uploading my pattern into Spoonflower and getting my prints come to life by receiving the fabric printed.

As I say, there are loads of tools available to us, and as a designer, I am always seeking for new ways to express my work: Illustrator for the technical work, Spoonflower for the fabric printing, Society 6 for different material and equipments, Keynote for the slides, Quicktime for the videos, Kajabi for my website and communication, Demio for my visio. These are the main ones that I use either every day or regularly.

Next week I will tell you about my prototypes...

Emmanuelle