Fabric Designing 101

Well, after the craziness of the last four weeks, I'm finally getting back to designing fabric. My first collection, Louetta's Garden is at Northcott already and I anticipate it to launch this fall and to be in quilt shops in spring 2012. Hopefully soon I will be able to post digital images of the fabrics in the collection

In the meantime, I've been working on four more collections. Along the way I've learned how to create repeats, to reduce colors, and lots of other things that I can't remember the names of right now. But right now I'm trying to figure out how to separate my designs into different color layers. Luckily my design director sent me a disc with sample fabric files on it so that I can see what the correct format is (but now I'm trying to figure out how to reproduce the correct format).

I watched a few videos on youtube that gave me a little bit of a better understanding about the importence of separating color layers (it's kind of like creating the color screens for the printer). Then I checked my book, Adobe Photoshop for Textile Design by Chipkin, and got hung up on spot channels which are not the same thing as color layers.

I began to get a little frustrated so I started looking through the differnet pull down menus and playing a little bit. I think I might have stumbled onto the right thing and if I am correct, it's really quite simple.....I emailed the image file to my design director to find out if I did do it correctly. Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck!