World's Largest Collection of Re-Imagined Feedsack Patterns - 28 Vector Repeats for Sale

I'm just putting that statement out there because I can't believe anyone else would do it!

TracyMillerDesigns

Custom Quilt Tops - Make a Cheater Quilt

I'm so pleased to now be a part of PatternJam, a super fun and easy-to-use website for designing your own quilt top.

All of my fabrics from Modern Yardage are there, and I've got new, special pattern collections arriving there soon. Search under Fabric Shop by Designer to find me.

"In Orbit" will be there soon, a collection for space lovers of all ages.

Go to Pattern Jam and just have fun. It's as easy as filling in a coloring book page!

Scented Drawer Liners for Baby - Elodie Essentials

I've had the great luck of being a part of several startup companies by developing the repeat patterns that go on their products.

One such company is Elodie Essentials, which features my designs. So far, the line includes two versions of drawer liners for baby, but Lisa, the owner, and I have been hard at work getting the next designs ready for production.

Next time you need a unique gift for a baby or baby shower, remember these scented drawer liners!

Antique Seed Catalog Cover

From my archives of collected images, I chose a Burpee's Seed Catalog cover to "vectorize."

Working on this is how I spent many hours of my Christmas time off.

Vintage Dress Patterns

My Mom was a seamstress who sewed all my clothes until I was a teenager, and then I started sewing them myself.

Shopping for dress patterns and fabric, then, is practically in my DNA. Combine that with my love of designs, and for turning vintage images into vector, and VIOLA! You have what you see below.

Quilt Label Sighting - Modern Yardage Meets Modern Patchwork

Quilting is alive and well, a great hobby and timeless art form. 

 Modern Patchwork magazine keeps quilters up to date on what's new and classic, and has an ardent following of quilters, DIY-ers and sewing enthusiasts.

I was happy, then, to see Modern Yardage quilt labels were featured in a Hot Picks review in Modern Patchwork magazine.

One of the labels shown is mine, the one with the little birds in the lower left.

See it here at Modern Yardage.

And below.

Old Vintage Fashion Plates

For recreation, I design all kinds of things just for fun, knowing they likely will never be a product.

I recently came across some fashion plates from the early 1900's that were fairly high res, AND in the public domain, I downloaded several dozens of them. (You never know when they might figure into a design project.)

But, they also fed right into my ongoing search to find things to apply my repeating patterns to. So, I opened a fashion plate in Photoshop, extracted the black outline, copy and pasted it into Ai, and used Live Trace on it. Live Trace almost always needs quite a bit of cleanup to get rid of its distinctive weirdness, and this time was no exception.

But when I was done, I filled in all the negative spaces, and viola! 

Here are two samples of the 5 I did, showing the before and after.

The Research is In!

Just for fun ...

Just For Fun

I did another vectorizing of an old ad today, inserting my own designs in the dress, hat and butterflies. Today was all about designing for recreational purposes only. And it WAS fun!

I had planned on creating some snappy text, but since I've been spending a lot of time recently giving myself pep-talks, this seemed appropriate.

Quilt Labels - Baby's First Birthday and Quilt Washing Instructions

Modern Yardage has just added my two newest quilt labels to their line up.

I've done them in several different colorways. 

Order as few or many as you like at $1.00 each.

Another 18th Century Redo

This design had another large flower, but I changed the design by just using the one. I included the smaller bouquet, but fudged it a lot to make it different from the original.

The leaves took forever!

Digital Collage

I've loved so many collages and have always aspired to make them. I'm not a "blank canvas" artist/designer though, so I face fear when beginning.

Lucky for me, I have a library of over a thousand vector repeats and a hefty library of digital images, mostly vintage. A lot of them are already clipped. (Another thing I do in my spare time.)

It was simple then, to begin with a design I love, likely a pattern I've recently completed. This is the case here ... in fact, I've featured several of the designs in this collage in the last few weeks.

Digital Scrapbook Paper

I've got SO many design collections, many of which go to Modern Yardage.

But, they're also perfect for scrapbook papers, and Etsy is the perfect place to sell them in digital format. Once the listing is posted, Etsy does all the work.

There's some overhead on my end, of course, formatting it all for the listings, but now that I have a process in place, I should be able to work my way through my collections.

Accuquilt Quilt Block Contest

I took my newest pattern collection, Merriweather, and applied it to a quilt block I created for Accuquilt's contest.

Fingers crossed!

Old Wallpaper Advertisement

This is another fun way to fill an existing image, in this case a wallpaper ad, with your own designs:

All of these patterns are mine.

The Four Seasons - A Set of Four Ready to Frame Prints Coming Soon

I'll continue to add vintage-effects cars to a collection before I launch my new Etsy store.

But I'm taking a break from the cars  with a series of children, starting with the four seasons and some sweet little girls.

I would again like to thank Dustin of RetroSupplyCo. at Creative Market for his brilliant Photoshop expertise. He makes me look like a genius.

Here's Winter:

My Lookbook is Published

My wonderful regular clients have kept me quite busy for the last several weeks. Once I had a couple of "free" days, I finished my lookbook, which I had been working on for a couple of months.

See it here.

I also got a few cool florals done, and revamped my website. I've been mad about coral and gray lately!

Case in point: 

My Interview with Make It In Design

In week that otherwise saw me designing like crazy - designs no one has seen yet - my interview with Make It In Design has been posted.

Another One of THOSE Weeks!

By that I mean, I didn't do much new designing, but instead was doing some hourly graphic jobs for some of my awesome clients!

Heck, I want them to be successful as much I they do! And what a blessing that I made a living as a graphic designer this week.

I did create a promotional for my Modern Yardage collection Hedgerow in Summer.

Multi-purpose Floral

Gotta keep 'em coming. Large scale, small, ditzy, contemporary, classic, mod, flower power, elegant ... you name it.

Florals are the most sought after patterns.

Here's the one I did today. I'm still working out the colors.