Reinterpretation

I think I have said before that when it comes to my patterns I am not too precious. I design them, release them out into the big wide world and wait with curiosity to see what people do with them.

I find it exciting to see other people's interpretation of my patterns and to see how differently another creative mind can view my work . So you can imagine my delight when I discovered that my Kea pattern had been transformed into a pigeon! How cool is this!?!

Photo posted with permission from Nicole of Patchwork Duck

I love all the extra detail that has been added and the skyline in the background is amazing isn't it?! Here's the Kea in its original form just to remind you:

But I don't just leave it up to others to reinterpret my work. I recently reinterpreted one of my own patterns! You see, I needed to make a birthday present for a friend who loves fantails. I knew straight away that I wanted to sew her a fantail cushion, and I also knew that I wanted to make the fantail a bit more colourful than the last one that I sewn.

The Original Fantail

I can't quite remember where I was when the idea came to me, but all at once it occurred to me that I should make the tail in rainbow colours. The idea really grew on me and when I discovered that the fantail in my pattern has 7 feathers in its tail (one feather for each colour of ROYGBIV), I knew that I had to do it!

Computer Mock-up

One of the fun things about having the pattern designing software is that I can immediately test ideas without wasting any fabric. I was really pleased with the computer generated mock-up and I posted it on instagram to test other peoples reactions. Luckily the recipient was one of the people to give it the thumbs up (phew!)

Sewing the fantail this way takes away a lot of the small details and makes it significantly easier. It sewed up really quickly. I love the way that the rainbow worked and it just shows me how much I have learnt about fabric selection- the last rainbow project that I tried was a long time ago and it was a bit of a fabric vomit.

A bit of simple quilting using my walking foot and the cushion was complete! I love the way it turned out.

Do you stick faithfully to patterns or do you like to give them your own twist?