"More for Me" Monday | Weekends from Erin McMorris

You probably know Erin McMorris from her fabric lines Park Slope and Wildwood. Her new line Weekends for Freespirit Fabrics just recently hit fabric stores.
Weekends is described as a “fresh new collection of designs inspired by sunny days, with time to garden, bike or picnic in the park. Combining hand-drawn flowers with precise patterns and dots create designs that are summery and modern. The palettes, with butter yellow, tomato red, lavender and leaf green will take you from dawn to dusk.”

It sounded too delicious to resist, so we caught up with Erin to find out a bit more about her new line and what inspired it. In addition, because it's Monday, we've got a bit of the new line to give away to a Fat Quarterly reader!
How does your background as a graphic designer influence you?

A lot! I still think of my work as graphic designs. I love bold flat patterns and I still look at a lot of graphic designers for inspiration.

What is your design process? Do you sketch or paint your designs and then scan into a computer or do you design direct on the computer?

I usually do a really quick pencil sketch just so I get the feeling and the scale, and then I scan it into the computer and redraw it from there. I never draw complete sketches because I'm really impatient to start drawing in the computer! Sometimes an idea doesn't work, so I don't want to spend a lot of time sketching things that don't work once they are colored. I'm not a very linear thinker so I don't really know where a sketch is going to go once I start redrawing it and that’s part of the fun.


With the creation of digital printing services many quilters would like to try their hand at designing fabric. Do you have any tips for wannabe fabric designers?

I think digital printing is fantastic. It really opens the door for just experimenting and having fun with designs because there are no rules and you are the only client. I actually want to try some designs myself!

What is your idea of a perfect weekend?

Oh, it has many variations, but I think the perfect weekend would be flying to Paris on an all expense paid trip! My reality is more likely to be lots of lounging and reading, beautiful weather, yummy food, fabulous friends and laughing, laughing, laughing.

Butter yellow, tomato red, lavender and leaf green. Mmmm it sounds like a picnic! How did you decide the colourways?

I had an idea of the colors before the prints really. I knew I wanted to try softer melons and lavenders that I haven't used before. I had been seeing a lot of those colors in the market and wanted to see if I could make them work.

Where does the inspiration for Weekends come from?

That’s always a hard question for me. I find that I usually just dive in with a print or 2 that I just like. Then I sort of see where the designs are taking me and get a feeling of the inspiration from there. So because the colors started out softer, the prints started out that way too, and I tried to pair them with some harder edged designs and motifs as well. I started thinking of them being used in a picnic and what prints would be where...like "Saturday" is the print for the main quilt to sit on and "Hopscotch" would be a perfect print for napkins, and "Lilyrose" would work as a print inside of a picnic basket. That is where I found the prints going. I think the last print I designed is "Go by Bike" because it tied up the Weekend theme to me because no weekend is complete unless I'm on my bike.

What is coming next for Erin McMorris?

I have no idea, but if you had any thoughts, let me know!

Interested in winning a bit of "Weekends" for your own summer projects? We've got two fat quarter bundles to give away to two lucky readers. Simply leave a comment on this post and tell us what your perfect weekend would look like. We'll randomly select two comments next Sunday, July 11th, to win these beautiful little bundles.