Inspirations of Daughter Earth/Katy Tanis Designer for FreeSpirit Fabrics

October 4, 2024 Artists & Designers, Fabric & Sewing

Tell us about yourself.

Hello readers. I’m Katy, a children’s book illustrator and textile designer. I love research and adventuring to wild places to observe animals and ecosystems. That inspires most of my work.

What inspires you?
My childhood house was filled with patterns and colors. My mom took us to fabric and crafts stores often. She made most of our curtains, pillows, quilts, and Halloween costumes. I remember one time whining with my siblings because we were stuck in the car for what seemed like hours. We assumed we must be headed somewhere spectacular like Disney World. Only to arrive at our final destination… a fabric store. We gave my mom a lot of grief about that. She’d probably be amused that I now design quilting fabric.

When I first moved away from home to go to university. I realized all those colors and patterns helped create a warm, cozy home. In my painting and drawing classes, I put so much effort into rendering textiles and patterns and got bored while working on the rest of the paintings. So I thought, maybe I should try designing my textiles. And that is how I got started!

Tell us about your fabric.
My upcoming collection is called Polar Seas. It has a few favorites from my previous Arctic Playground and Northern Seas collections (both Arctic animals) and added in new prints, mostly penguins (from the Antarctic). There is one print that features all 19 penguin species and the 4 puffin species. That fabric started as a painting for an art show at my local library!

Penguins are the animals that sparked my interest in zoology. I wanted to grow up to be Mr. Popper. Many patient middle school teachers allowed me to turn in work filled with penguin doodles, so we should thank them for helping me hone my penguin drawing skills.

What advice do you have for the new maker?

IMAGE: just a few of many early repeat explorations in Adobe Illustrator 2017

Be patient with yourself. Keep trying. Sometimes it takes me years to gain the skills to execute the ideas I have in my head. For my latest collection, I revisited a seal print I couldn’t get to work for my previous seal collection. I finally could create what was in my head 7 years earlier and was very happy to be able to add it to this collection! I just wanted a circular seal on a triangular iceberg. A simple, geometric, cute seal print, right? But sometimes the simplest ideas are the hardest to execute. I dug up my files from 2017 so I could share the progress. When I decided to try it again this time around I was able to make it work very easily!

IMAGE: attempt to add texture to make repeat cuter (but it turned out less cute) 2017