Inspired by Fabric: Introducing On Your Mark by Simone Bradford

You've likely seen sneak peeks of Simone Bradford's first collection, On Your Mark, and we're sure you're eager for more.

Today we're officially introducing Simone and her gorgeous fabrics; starting next week we'll be sharing what ten different designers have made using a selected palette of these modern prints. Meet Simone below and learn about her designs.

Here we go!

The brights:

And the low volume prints:

Q. How did you get into quilting?

SB: A friend of mine tricked me into it. She invited me to a retreat at her house, and when I said I didn’t want to come, she suggested I just come for lunch. She showed me quilting magazines, and I didn’t like any of the design. But then I found an apple core quilt done in modern fabrics, and that got me started. A year later, I attended the Road to California show and it opened my eyes to this whole other world of creativity.

Q. Do you have an art background?

SB: Since I was in preschool, I knew I was going to be an artist. I’m a graphic designer. I’ve done a little big of everything—logos, letterhead, t-shirts, brochures. I studied graphic design knowing I could do it staying home with my kids.

Q. Do you have a design philosophy that sets apart your work?

SB: A lot of my design concepts come from asking “what are the rules and how do we break them?” Quilts have squares, blocks, borders. How do we break that? Often good design comes from knowing what the rules are and figuring out how to bend them.

Q. Was designing a fabric line challenging?

SB: It started with me banging my head against the wall for three weeks. I was designing on the computer with Illustrator and nothing I created looked like me. I woke up one morning and realized that I needed to go back to my life drawing skills. My philosophy is that the computer should be the tool behind what you want to create; it’s not the creative force.

Q. How did On Your Mark begin?

SB: My thought was to create a wide range of different marks on the paper. The collection is Modern Sketchbook Mix: a series of different shape, weight, thickness, color, and energy marks. It’s also a play on words because “on your mark” is what you say when you begin a race, or start something new.

Q. What was the first print you designed?

SB: Exclamations. I started with Sharpie pens and then switched to Micron pens. When you look at them, I’m not sure you’ll see them as exclamations.

Q. Walk us through the rest of your designs.

SB: I did more marks in a similar vein, called Smidgens. It has more Xs and Os in it, as well as some hidden numbers.

Vowels at Attention: I felt like we needed at least one design with some type of letter in it. I narrowed it down just to vowels, and then added the shadows behind them so they’re standing upright. We can’t live without vowels—there’s no written language without them.

Ink Splats are actually ink splots.I bought India ink and splattered the heck out of some paper. I spent days making splatter marks to get the right shapes, and to get tiny sprays coming off. Then I scanned them and borrowed the scribbled lines from the moons to add interest. It helps this print relate to the others.

Field of Flecks is inspired by Vincent Van Gogh. He had some really beautiful sketches with so much movement.

Scritch Scratch was originally drawn super tiny. I wanted to play with size and volume. I blew it up big when I scanned it.

Scribbled Moons: I saw some circles filled in with lines and liked it. This design has both texture and depth with different colors and layering.

Scribbled Squares are similar to the moons, but it’s more flat. The fabrics need to be related, like brother and sister, but not every design can be the queen mother. You can’t have too many queens living in the same house.