Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Find Your Pin-spiration


Hi everyone! I'm Kat from Calico Cali Designs, and I'm sew excited to be blogging here with Patched Works!

Have you ever wondered what inspires your favorite fabric designer? How do they come up with such great color combinations, striking patterns and motifs? Thanks to Pinterest, now you can find out exactly what inspires them.
 

What is Pinterest? I'm glad you asked! Pinterest is an online cork board. You "pin" photos to it that inspire you. Think of it as a virtual design wall, but instead of pinning up individual quilt blocks you pin photos. Each photo links back to the website where it came from...so it's a great way to keep track of multiple tutorials, recipes you want to try and anything else you don't want to lose track of.

Pins are organized onto category boards, and when you pin a photo, you decide which of your boards to pin it to. To see what inspires others, you follow people and the boards they create. You can choose to follow every board that they have created or just certain ones. When you first log on to Pinterest you will see the pins from the people/boards that you follow. You can also search for items that you are interested in. 

In order to join you have to be invited to create an account. You can browse the site without an account but you will not be able to create any boards or pin any photos until you have an account. Click here to request an invite to join.

When you first join I recommend installing the 'Pin It' button to your internet browser's tool bar, which makes pinning extremely easy and automatically links pins back to their originating website. Click here for more info on how to install the 'Pin It' button.

For more details on how Pinterest works you can read their "Help" section. It has clear instructions on how to join, pin photos, follow people and more.   

As for those fabric designers I mentioned earlier, below is a list of just some of the amazing fabric designers and companies that you can follow on Pinterest.  Be prepared to be inspired by all of the goodies you will see!

(click on the designers name to open up and view their Pinterest boards)

* Kate Spain - fabric designer with Moda 
* Yummy Goods (Melissa Averinos) -  fabric designer with Andover Fabrics
* Pat Sloan - fabric designer with P&B Textiles. Starting in 2012 her fabric will be with Moda
* Betz White - fabric designer with Robert Kaufman Fabrics
* Bunny Hill Designs - fabric designer with Moda
* Moda Fabrics
* Happy Zombie  (Monica Solorio-Snow ) - fabric designer with Lecien 
* Bari J - fabric designer with Art Gallery Fabrics 
* Heather Ross - fabric designer with Seven Islands Fabrics

Happy Pinning!!!
- Kat