Hit or Miss, a Mini Pattern Collection

I had an idea last fall for a mini pattern collection inspired by a couple of personal illustrations I did a few years ago (above). At the time I was working on getting my Prairie Life collection released and my Spoonflower shop up and running so I wasn’t able to act on it immediately. By the time I had a chance to make the hero pattern, I’d been thinking about it for so long that it came together smoothly and quickly. But that’s all I did. The rest of the collection has been on hold.

Last Friday I had a studio night and it was so productive! I felt really inspired and excited to hash out the rest of my mini collection. I made four supporting coordinate patterns for my hero print, and even came up with a name and logo for the collection. It’s called Hit or Miss and it’s quite a departure from Prairie Life.

Where Prairie Life was extremely personal and almost autobiographic, Hit or Miss is just fun. It’s a playful yet refined collection of patterns that explore the many moods of love. Smiling and frowning hearts, pierced with arrows, balanced by graphic coordinates featuring arrow motifs, feather-inspired chevrons, and softly textured blenders. The palette is soft blue and pink with warm gold tones to give the collection sophistication while remaining lighthearted.

My motifs all started as physical drawings or paintings that I scanned and vectorized. For the first time, I experimented with trying to capture the texture of paint with vectors, which was really interesting and something I look forward to doing more. The texture ended up being too busy for the hearts with faces, but I did use it in the pattern Sweet Spot.

Below are some colour studies I did to figure out the palette and how I was going to treat the line work. All I knew going in was that I wanted to incorporate pinks and golds to add variation to the design.

The bottom row just has the addition of a reflection in the eyes. I’ve always found, especially in my illustration work for the children’s market, adding that detail really makes the faces come to life.

Because I decided on a scattered layout for the hero print, I went with structured designs for the coordinates in order to provide balance and stability to the collection. Here are the final patterns. I’m going to make different colour versions of the coordinates for my Spoonflower shop so people can choose the colour scheme they want, but this is the intended version of this collection and the one I’ll be putting in my portfolio.

Yes No Maybe So features hand-drawn hearts with expressive faces — some smiling, some frowning — scattered across the surface and pierced with arrows for a playful take on love’s many moods.

Straight Shot showcases hand-drawn arrows arranged in clean rows to create stripes. The linear layout brings order and direction to the collection, while the dark colour provides contrast.

Sweet Spot is a tone-on-tone pink heart pattern arranged in a four-petal floral layout that reads as a textured solid. The monochromatic colour scheme makes it an essential grounding print within the collection. The negative space creates a lot of movement in this pattern.

Little Crush is a small-scale blender featuring tiny multicoloured hearts. Designed to read as a texture from a distance, this print adds warmth, colour, and cohesion without competing with larger motifs.

Feathered Aim is a hand drawn graphic chevron pattern inspired by the feathers on the end of an arrow. Rendered in two tone blue, this design adds rhythm and structure while remaining soft enough to function as a versatile coordinate. The repeating chevrons provide visual movement without overwhelming the other patterns.

I envision these prints as accent pillows on a child’s bed, or assembled into a cute baby quilt. And I think Yes No Maybe So would be great on the cover of a little notebook or journal with one of the coordinating patterns for the end papers.

These patterns are all available in my Spoonflower shop. Let me know what you think of this mini collection. Would you use these fabrics for a sewing project?