Creating Valley View

If you've been following my work for awhile now, you have probably already heard that my debut fabric collection with Henry Glass Fabrics is officially out in the world! This has been a work in progress for a while now, and I am so excited that it's finally here and that I can see it all in person!

At the Top by Hollis Kitchin, original painting is 30"x21" in watercolor and gouache

I've always been drawn to fabric and sewing, my grandmother on my dad's side was a seamstress and taught me the basics of sewing on her beautiful Singer machine. I later learned more in my home economics class in middle school, and my parents gifted me my very first sewing machine when I was in 6th grade. I dabbled in learning how to follow sewing patterns, and eventually learned to draft some fairly simple sewing patterns from clothing I already owned.

In college I had the opportunity to take a batik class and loved working with fabric in a new way. Flash forward to 2023, I've been slowly building my art business while also co-running my bra fitting store, and getting used to being a new mom. During this time I was fortunate to find a course on creating repeating patterns and fell in love with the process and the possibilities.

Back in May of 2024 is when we started the fabric creation process, my painting, At the Top was slotted to be the main panel, from there I set about creating some new paintings to go with the collection as well as som existing paintings that would become patterns in the collection.

The original painting for a misty tree repeat

the fabric on the bolt

Original fox art

In it's final repeat on the fabric

My logo and collection title on the fabric selvedge

Origial bubbles

My original pattern layout and colors

The final pattern recolored with the magic of technology

Another bubble cloud variation

Some of the original flower paintings that became the floral repeats

The full fabric collection

Working with a fabric company is a lot like working with an editor, it's a bit of a collaboration and they help finalize colors, pattern scale and overall feel of the collection. A prime example is the pattern in the collection called Tiny Bubbles I originally painted these in shades of pink, purple and yellow and then created the repeat pattern. Henry Glass then recolored the pattern into greens and blues to keep the collection from leaning heavily into the pinks. The misty trees pattern also was recolored into a turquoise/blue color and scaled down from the green version to provide more variety. All in all these are adjustments that make sense and make the whole collection more cohesive.

I can't wait to share the process for my upcoming collection Land Called Honah Lee that is slotted to come out early 2027.

Thanks for joing my artistic journey,

Hollis