I wanted to start with the ladybird pattern as I felt like I had a lot of leaves for that design and I wanted to make sure the colour scheme worked with the red I had chosen for the new ladybirds.
I first decided to try the block repeat as these I find quick and easy, and I was able to put these together quite quickly which would allow me to see how the design would work. I put these in repeat and I thought these worked well, but it was obvious where the repeat was with the line of leaves down the centre of the repeat too.
Following a tutorial, I tried to do a half drop intitially using a few motifs, to learn the technique first to not complicate it to the point where I would get lost. I think it has worked well and this now helps me to understand how to do these types of patterns. It is harder to see the repeat which I think is great, and even when you can see the repeat there is far more of a flow to it which I think works so much better, I am excited about this technique and I think I could do a lot more with my patterns now from this.
I worked on the ladybird pattern a lot, I do really like the repeat and I do like it on both white and green, but for the sake of using more colour here, I think the green is a better choice for the front of the giftbag. When I tried to design on quite a small scale repeat, it is obvious where the repeat was, but I find it usually is easy to find the repeat looking at it on a laptop screen when it could be used for a wall or a duvet set instead with the size of the scale. I think for the giftbag it would be a larger scale repeat anyway so the motifs were bigger on the bag and it would be a lot easier to see the individual colours and parts of it.
Thinking of a design to go well with the green ladybird pattern is important. I first thought about a green in a shade darker, and I just did not think that was very attractive, I did try it in the lighter colour but it would have been the same colour as the background of the ladybirds then and may have become too merged with the front and back of the bag. I think the gusset does need to look different too for the sake of the motifs being cut off on the edges, and if the gusset was the same colour I think that would look very odd. I then thought about my patterns and use of colour, and decided to try the light pink, I found this to be a pleasing pattern and actually works well with the green as well so I was very pleased with this one.
Tahlia Paige 