The Beauty of Dill

A new contest is approaching on Spoonflower and the theme is:  Herb Garden.  My design for this challenge went through many iterations before I settled on a final design that I liked. Initially I thought I would do something very rectilinear, depicting herbs in boxes both from above and in elevation view.  But as often happens when designing, the vision in my head and the translation to the drawn art were not in sync and I decided to take a different approach.  I thought that perhaps I would just do a tossed-style pattern of a variety different herbs (no boxes).  I pulled out my sketchbook and began drawing herbs.  I thought they were looking very pretty on the page, but I wasn't very excited about this concept either.  Just having  herbs tossed about didn't seem very unique or interesting to me.

Hand-drawn herbs in my Sketchbook

 

While I was drawing these herbs, I stumbled across a plant that did inspire me:  Dill Flowers!  I had no idea that the flowers for dill were so pretty: Delicate spirals of little buds radiating from slender stems. I was finally really excited about an idea for this theme!  So I ditched the sketchbook drawings and went back to Illustrator and began drawing my version of these pretty plants. 

Finished Dill Flowers Pattern

 

There is so much detail in these pretty little plants that I decided not to add too many other elements to the pattern. A simple pale yellow circle pattern over classic white creates a subtle print behind the dill flowers.  A funny thing does seem to happen though in a zoomed out view of the print:  The yellow in the spirals almost create a blur of color around the stems.  For this reason I wanted to share a close up of the design so you could see the detail of the flowers.

 

Zoomed in Detail of Dill Flowers

Printed Fabric View

I hope you love this summery print as much as I do!  Voting is now up for the Herb Garden competition and runs through Wed. July 30th.  You can vote here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/261