"Painted Summer" is Finally Here!

I can't believe it - It's finally here! More than a year after painting the art for this collection, I was at last able to pick up my samples from In The Beginning Fabrics, the manufacturer. There are 28 fabrics (!!!) in the collection and it didn't really impress me just how much this was until I started to hang it up in our big old tree to photograph. (Click on any photos you want to see bigger).

Why did this not impress me? Because for a year, all you see of the design is at most a 13 x 19" paper printout. It's amazing and so exciting how different a design will look once it lives on cotton that's 44" wide and as long as you want it to be. 

Look at the branch on that tree! It just keeps going and going and going. When we moved into this house, I had no idea I would one day use those branches to hang fabric. What a lucky duck I am to have that branch! See that greenish pattern? It's inspired by 5-petal wild roses and rose buds, white peonies that have a water lily-ish shape and lavender. If only I could bottle that smell.

I wanted the blue fabric to look like the water when the light is low on the horizon and the water turns a beautiful, inky indigo blue. 

Here is a photo that I took at Shark Reef Sanctuary Park on lovely Lopez Island in the idyllic San Juan Islands that has that deep rich blue glimmer to it.

Here is some more of that rich indigo blue.

This photo is for you Kaffe Fassett fans out there - I threw this fabric down on the table next to a lamp shade that I covered with a bit of his beautiful fabric years ago and was happily surprised by how nice the two of of them played together.

Mellow, grassy green, sunshiny hydrangeas, deep magenta berries, indigo hummingbirds.

 I just learned how to make pillowcases and I see those little sunshiny orange petal fabric morphing into a pair nicely. Once you know how to make two beautiful pillowcases in under an hour out of your favorite fabric, you will never go back!

This fabric with the hummingbirds (there are four color ways, or versions of it) is dedicated to the ones that buzz us while we try to get any work done in the backyard garden. But we love them, anyway. :) 

We thought that "BEEP!" sound they make when they dive bomb us was made with their beak, but it's actually from their tail! Who knew?! Well, I guess these people did. 

I can see those butterflies slowly flapping their wings on a gentle breeze, looking for a flower to rest on. I saw a monarch in my yard today - all the way from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest! Amazing creatures.

See those pink flowers? They are all over my neighborhood and you could not get rid of them if you wanted to. 

They are indestructible and day-glo hot pink which means that of course I love them. Here's a pic of a bunch that grew in my neighbors parking strip.

Yep. That's me last I checked.

Here is a recent view out of my studio window. I feel another fabric collection coming on... do you? Gotta get painting!

HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE!!! Wishing you peace and happiness, Lida.