Designing our Baby Blankets - The process

Designing a baby blanket is an intimate blend of creativity, craftsmanship, and care. It’s more than just fabric; it’s about creating a cozy companion for a little one. In this blog post, we'll journey through the detailed process of how we design our baby blankets. From a sketch into a beautifully designed, hand-painted baby blanket.

1. Inspiration and Conceptualization

The journey begins with inspiration, I am not sure how inspiration works to be totally honest, most of the time for me, it's in the small hours of the morning when a design idea comes to mind. With our Baby Blankets, the Mouse design came first and was inspired by childhood memories - I wanted to create a central design with a floral surround. 

Mood Board Creation:

Once I have an initial concept (in my mind), the next step is to create a moodboard (Most of our designs start from a moodboard, usually with colour first)

For these designs I started with a colour palette - I went through many different paints and mixes to come up with the palette I had in my mind. I was wanting muted tones, that were calming and neutral enough to work in almost any setting. 

This was my initial colour palette - Earthy, soft and calming.

2. Sketching the Design

The next step is to put pencil to paper. Sketching is a crucial phase, where the initial ideas start to take shape. 

Elements I Consider when designing:

• Composition: If you are thinking about pattern (balance between positive and negative space.)
• Details: Inclusion of elements like florals, animals, or other motifs.
• Proportions: Ensuring the design elements are appropriately sized for a baby blanket, keep in mind you can scale it digitally later on - but make sure it is large enough and detailed if you wish to scale it (so it translates well onto fabric).

3. Painting the design

I use the rough sketch as a guide, my paint then adds the detail to it. This is where the colour palette comes in.

Usually with designs for fabric they are computerised, if they are hand sketched, they are then digitised at this point - and turned into vectors, to easily allow changes of colours etc and turned into digital copies (where I believe they lose character and the hand drawn quality).

That is why colour and getting the palette right is so important for me in the process, because we try and keep as close to the original work as possible, so the artwork holds its integrity.

Scanning the original painting:

• We scan the original work through a very high quality scanner and then colour correct the images to match the original artwork.

4. Choosing the Fabric

Selecting the right fabric is crucial for both the print, design and durability. I chose Organic cotton for our baby blankets due to it's softness and hypoallergenic properties. We run many tests and swatches on different fabrics to find the right one, sometimes adjusting the colour many times over to get as close to the original painting as possible.

For our baby blankets we made them double sided, so they have an extra layer of warmth, but also a matching floral on the other side. I had to make sure the scale on both sides of the blanket worked well. With simplicity on the one side, matched with a beautiful floral on the other.

7. Sewing and making

Once all the samples have been adjusted and fabric chosen, I then design the actual product including blanket size, labels, finishing details of seams, packaging and lace.

9. Packaging

Once our finished products arrive, we then package them with a handwritten note. Our hope is that our products bring joy to many across the world.

Conclusion

Designing and creating a baby blanket from a sketch involves a heartfelt process of creativity, precision, and love. Each step, from conceptualization to packaging, plays a crucial role in crafting a product that not only looks beautiful but provides comfort and warmth to the little ones who use it.

Whether it's for your own baby or a cherished gift, a hand-painted baby blanket is a wonderful way to add a personal touch to a beloved childhood essential.

You can find our hand painted Baby Blanket collection here Our range is designed to live together, pair them perfectly with our swaddle wraps and Cot Sheets.