Well, it’s been a long time coming. You’ve been requesting more tutorials about all kinds of design topics and now we’ve got some rolling in!  One reader was not sure how to turn a hand painted watercolor floral into a pattern, a few were interested in how to cut backgrounds out of complex photos and work with photographic prints, and we had a number of requests for tutorials on the pattern tool in Illustrator, and tons of other ideas keep floating by.

We’ve been itching to re-connect with you, our community but felt so overwhelmed in the midst of all the projects we had going on here at Pattern People–custom print designs for clients, creating patterns for our ready made collection, researching and developing our trend guides, not to mention juggling our spirited children and getting them all to sleep through the night!

Finally, we had a break in our schedules and a bout of decent sleep behavior from our kids. We’ve been thinking about our readers and remembering what inspired us to write our first e-book Pattern Design & Beyond in the first place.

It was 2007. We had just started Pattern People and our website was up. At the time, most print studios did not have a web presence so our site gained followers pretty quickly. People were really supportive and also asked lots of questions–how did we get started, how could they get into the business, and how could they turn their artwork into patterns. We didn’t have much time to respond as we were on a design rampage to create the biggest and best collection we could possibly muster. You see, we were going to have a booth at a trade show very soon and we were determined to look as prolific, creative, and professional as we possibly could. (Our determination eventually paid off, but definitely not at that first trade show!) While there, we were visited by a lot of young designers asking us the same questions we were getting in emails and phone calls. In the long hours between clients and designers stopping by the booth, we had time to draw, gossip, eat cookies, and brainstorm. And that’s when it dawned on one of us. (It’s hard to remember who said it first.) Other designers want to know how to do this. Let’s help them!

It’s been really fun to talk with all of you and share with you what we’ve learned. I’m glad we finally got to update the original e-book  with new information about the industry, as well as social media tips by guest contributor Schatzi Brown! Repeat After Me has also received an update with a new Illustrator pattern tool tutorial among other material. And I’ve gotten re-energized from creating these new video tutorials. Learning video editing with iMovie has been surprisingly smooth. The program is pretty intuitive and fun to work with, and whenever I couldn’t figure something out, there were plenty of tutorials online.  In the end, I felt like I was able to do everything I wanted to with the tutorials I’ve created so far and I’m feeling a real sense of accomplishment! We’ve gotten such great comments from you guys about all our new offerings and also tons of requests for more topics. After the first two releases, we received so many requests for one topic in particular (a more in-depth look at precise repeats in photoshop) that I was inspired to create a third video over the weekend. Check it out here!  I love how limitless pattern design really is and can’t wait to connect with you guys in a more personal and educational way soon! Stay tuned.

In the mean time, tell us what you want to learn about. Thank you for all your support and can’t wait to hear from you!

– Claudia