Before school let out, I spent a few of my lunch hours at the Fergus Falls high school (Kennedy Secondary) speaking to Michelle Hexum's Fashion Design students.
The class of three (kind of small this semester) was sewing American Doll clothing for a charity and the dolls would be given away at Christmas time.
They wanted to learn about the world of a surface fabric designer– the process to go through to create a design and convert it into fabric, and the journey leading me to textile design.
With the small number of students, I had them draw some doodles and told them I would create new fabric designs from their sketches.
The goal was to create new fabrics that would coordinate with the doll clothes they had already started sewing.
I took their sketches back to my studio and got to work. I had more sketches than I could use for one project but tried to use as many as I could.
I created a handful of fabrics from their motifs and then narrowed it down to four designs. I custom-ordered the fabric as Kona Cotton (from Spoonflower) in a half yard of each. Shown below.
The fabrics arrived the last week of school and I didn't get to see the final garments for the project, but I think their dolls are going to be well dressed for Christmas!!
Who and What is Sunny & Clear?
When you mix a Minnesota graphic artist + seamstress you get magic! As a hybrid artist, Teresa makes pattern designs, turns them into fabrics and sews them into something artsy and nice– like decorative pillows, quilts or tea towels.
And now, add candles to the mix! What started out as a label design project soon found her making her own line of hand-poured soy candles.