A Day in the Life of a Fabric Designer

A question I often get asked is 'what is it like to be a fabric designer?' To give you an idea, I thought I'd share a little snippet of a day in the life of Cassandra Connolly. No two days are typically the same, especially as I have two younger children and my day often pauses at 3pm when I collect them from school and resumes when they are in bed. I find that my most productive hours are in the morning and evening so I try to schedule tasks for these times which I feel are most important. Working with my own personal energy helps my day to flow and work for me, although I know that everyone works differently and it's a very personal thing to share. I also don't work every evening, but when I am really inspired by a project, I will often work into the night. My day will also vary considerably depending which stage of the design process I am working on. For some context, today I have just started a new fabric collection and am just finishing the research stage and am about to start designing. So come with me and let me talk you through my day.

9am-10am

The children are at school, so I'm straight into work mode. I make a cuppa and get out my diary. At the end of each day I like to make a to-do list for the following day. In the morning I will go over this and add to it accordingly. I will also prioritise tasks which need to be done immediately and start with those. One of my first tasks is usually to respond to emails. While I generally respond to these as I receive them throughout the day, I sometimes have to respond to the mill which is based in Korean. Due to the time differences I will usually get a response from them while I am asleep, so will always respond to them first thing.

Yesterday I received strike-off's from the mill for an upcoming collection. These aren't the final colours and I can see immediately that some of the colours need tweaking slightly so I will need to feed this back to the mill. We only get two strike-off's and the turn around is quite quick so they will need my feedback as soon as possible so they can make changes. This can sometimes be quite laborious and will involve me checking each fabric against the show card and my computer screen. Naturally there will always be discrepancies between anything printed compared to a computer screen as every monitor shows colours differently. By feeding back to the mill I hope to help them to get the colours as accurate as possible.

10am- 11 am

Once I've sent my notes and observations to the mill I need to move on to my next job which is photography. I need to photograph a quilt Sally has just sent me. I usually like to take a photograph of the quilt in situ somewhere so that people can see it in context, but today I am going to focus on taking some close ups of the details and stitching for my social media and a blog post. I will then go through them, selecting the best and edit them.

11am- 12pm

Time to write a quick blog post about my quilt. Last night I wrote a few notes on what I wanted to include. I find this really helps me to get started, especially when I don't have much time. I really enjoy writing and always have fun doing this.

12pm- 12. 30pm

Lunch time. I don't often take a long lunch break, and will happily heat and eat a soup in 30 minutes. I will also check on my social media and respond to any comments on Instagram or Facebook.

12. 30pm-1. 30pm

Finally, time to start designing. I have just started this project and have already put together an extensive mood board. I will now spend the next hour refining this, pulling out colours, fonts and imagery which really resonates with my collection idea. I will put this on a secondary mood board and spend most of my time referencing this. If for some reason the collection isn't going in the direction I want, I will then go back to my initial mood board for more inspiration.

1. 30pm-3pm

Now is the fun part, drawing time. I already have some photos which I have taken especially for the collection, so I pull them up on screen and start drawing. I mostly draw directly on to my screen as it is easier me to put my patterns into repeats. I also really like the aesthetic I can create by drawing directly onto my screen, it gives a cleaner, more modern feel.

3pm

While not the official end to my day, at this point I do down tools and go to pick the children up from school. I often spend 20-30 minutes sat waiting in the car, so this is a great time for me to post on social media. If I have written a blog post in the day, I will often use imagery from this or reference the post itself.

8pm

The children are in bed and I find these next two hours are really productive for me. I don't work every evening but I do work on average 3 or 4 a week as I can get a lot done in this quiet time. My favourite evening tasks include writing blog posts and drawing. Tonight I will continue drawing elements for my collection. Over the next few days I will draw a lot of imagery. Some will be discounted, but most of it will be used. I love this stage of the project and can often be found with an audiobook drawing away.

10pm

Bedtime! Thank you so much for spending the day with me! I hope you enjoyed the journey.