Design Process

Hi First name / friend!

Kim here! I know you all are asking to hear about our design process. Today, I wanted to tell you about my current collection, Lil. It’s my most personal collection yet.

I think I can speak for all the Ruby Star Society designers in saying we always design with love, and we can’t help but be ourselves. There are so many possibilities and so many unknowns in the design process, though. Will the audience like this? Are people buying green fabrics right now? Is this too similar to what I did before, and is that bad or is that branding? One can get really bogged down with all the questioning and second-guessing. It is exhausting! I decided that, this time, I’d silence that internal, futile chatter. The only criteria I would use was whether *I* loved it, whether *I* would reach for it first for sewing.

Inspiration for days! I have a ton of vintage fabric. When I decided to lean into vintage florals for this collection, I pulled a bunch of pieces for reference and creative fuel.

In particular I love small-scale vintage florals, so that’s where I started. I do love dreaming up and creating novelty prints -- I also love buying them! But I have to admit that when it comes to sewing, I reach for the florals and geometrics first. Usually when creating a collection, the novelty or hero print comes first, and its companions evolve later. It felt almost rebellious to start with the supporters.

In the early stages of designing Lil, I had several candidates for my small florals. I like to make a ton of colorways to arrange and re-arrange and find the bridges between them.

I pulled out several completed prints from my files and sifted through my vintage fabric scraps for inspiration and motifs. I ended up with lots of choices -- always a nice problem to have.

The prairie-chic, patchwork cheater print trend was in full swing. I couldn’t get enough of it. My mood boards were filled with 70s Holly Hobby prints and 60s calico cats and turtles and mushrooms, mostly for me to zoom into the little print fills for inspiration. In a real forest-for-the-trees moment, I realized that bigger motifs filled with calico were just begging to be in this collection.

Sun Patch and Calico Apple in the strikeoff stage. We usually “strike off” or sample more colorways than we need. The top colorways in each column didn’t make the cut!

Enter Sun Patch and Calico Apple. Sun Patch is like the star of the calico party, and Calico Apple, well OK it’s kind of a novelty print, but still felt so much like me.

Lil is in stores now. I hope you love it as much as I do!