Recently, end of September or early October my wife and I went on one of our wander-walks – I had my sketchbook in hand. On Officer’s Row in Vancouver WA I walked through a field full of blue-purple flowers… here are some of the sketches I did that day.

Sue Clancy’s sketchbook page of the overall view of the field on Officers Row.

Sue Clancy’s sketchbook page – details of flowers seen on Officers Row

The field was full of flowers; a patch here was full of blue ones, a patch there was white, another one there was magenta….it reminded me of curling up under/on a color-block quilt having a hot chocolate and reading a good book with a comforting lap cat/dog.

Then my work and life in general went on at a very busy pace and all the while in the back of my mind I was remembering that cozy quilt-like pattern of flowers seen on our walk…and thinking of how best to re-create that comfy feeling within pattern design and how that could be used in my fine art, or as a scarf or…???

Probably after the last chicory flower had faded from the real-life field I finally found time to create a pattern. In my studio I played around, designing several patterns using the chicory flower as a motif. As I worked I thought of several of our friends who garden, who like to go for walks/hikes and the upcoming winter season so I decided to make my pattern design into a scarf. I’m thinking it might be cozy to be able wear “end of summer” flowers during winter.

I used some paper I’d previously dyed and cut out the flower shape with an Xacto knife and glued it together. Then I cut up that just-created flower and re-glued it together in such a way that my finished design will digitally replicate as an overall pattern on fabric.  The last step is to do a bit of detail here and there on the flower petals with my color pencils. Here are photos of two of my multi-step process of pattern design creation:

phase 1

phase 2

Here’s what the finished scarf design looks like -and it is available via this link http://www.shopvida.com/collections/sue-clancy :

Scarf pattern design “Chic Chicory” by Sue Clancy http://www.shopvida.com/collections/sue-clancy

The pattern seems a bit lighter on the fabric – but that is because it is on a white/sheer type of fabric and the fabric type affects the “look” of the design. I do my best to keep in mind that this will happen when I’m creating my pattern design.

My Chic Chicory pattern turned out nicely … what do you think?