Using the new motifs that I made yesterday, I decided to create some patterns out of them to see what the motifs will look like in repeat. I found before that using my motifs had had so much detail and pattern in them, they made a plain background look very flat and if it was anything except a very light colour it would totally overpower the rest of the design and that is a problem.
So using the new motifs I created the tile here to be used for a block repeat, I actually do not mind the mixtures of colour here, it is difficult to jump into colour when I am not used to using a huge amount of it, I also do struggle with colour in general, it can be very dependant on lighting for my eyes, and colours from my Ipad to my laptop can sometimes translate very differently. If I am building a colour palette for myself, I tend to use threads to do this in a shop, because the thread is very dense and shows off the colour well. This often helps me to see what will go together well too. For this particular module, I did not get the chance to do that, and I was very unsure with my colour palette, so this may be the next thing to consider changing.
I think on the negative side of this pattern, the background looks very flat and the use of the texture stripe that I tried is quite big and looks more like a motif at the foreground than the texture on the background which might have added some more depth to it instead. I do not mind the colour mixture, I think the dragonflies do stand out because they are flying over the negative space, but I think I would like a busier design, I love doing tossed busy styles as hero designs and I think for the giftwrap sheet and roll these should be busy designs to keep them interesting all over if they are going to be wrapped around something small or large. I think the main issue I had with this design is that I do not love it, I know I can do better and I want to achieve something I can be proud of. I think part of that process will be learning how to do a proper half drop too, I achieved it last year with a flower design that had no negative space, but I could not translate this to a design that has negative space around the motifs, so this is an important step for me to achieve better quality patterns.
Tahlia Paige 