Designer Feature: Jane Farnham

This Friday I have some fantastic work from Jane Farnham, I absolutely love her work so am so pleased I can share her work and a little bit about her with you all!

Jane started by going to art college then went on to do a number of different jobs, including being a wedding dress maker, a visual merchandiser, an interior designer and a mock up artist (wow!).  So she has a huge variety of skills and has always tried to find something creative in her work, which you can clearly see by all of her wonderfully creative jobs.  In more recent years she has reassessed where she wants to be, she took The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design Course and started to pursue what she really wanted to do.  Jane started her business at the beginning of this year so it just getting going and getting her work out there for people to see.  She describes it as being "A very new and exciting time with lots of great opportunities coming my way and I absolutely love it!".  I know exactly how you feel, it is such an exciting industry to be in, waking up every morning and wondering if there will be a wonderful email in your Inbox that will change your life!  

So Jane what is it that you love about patterns?

"I love patterns and colour and wherever I am I'm always looking for repeat in designs.  I could be sitting in a restaurant with a friend and I'll be chatting and at the same time checking out the repeat in the wallpaper behind them or a cool colour combination, it's a compulsion!"

It most definitely is, and I'm not sure some people will get the addiction to pattern designing!  How would you describe your style and tell us a little about your design process:

"I tend to use a mixture of line drawings and doodles along with computer illustration to create my work.  I take a lot of my inspiration from nature, old chine and fabrics and am often looking around charity shops, antique markets or our local park, taking photographs of any and everything that interest me.  I will then draw in pen and scan the drawing into my mac and play around with the shapes and colour palette.  I end up creating a series of patterns that all sit together and hopefully work well in a variety of different combinations."

And what about the future?

"My ambition is to design a range of fabric bolts that could be used for quilting as this is another big love of mine, so fingers crossed!"

Well will definitely be keeping my eyes open for them, I love fabric!
You can find Jane on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram here.

Jane's also shared a snippet of her workspace for you, I spy Lilla Rogers book in her picture, which I happen to be getting for my birthday in just over a week, can't wait to read it!