Following up on yesterday’s blackwork pattern, I thought I’d talk a little bit about developing designs for blackwork and show you a bit of the basic process of coming up with myriad patterns all from the same basic design.

I don’t normally sit around drawing blackwork patterns, but since it was part of the spot sampler series, I messed around a bit with one theme, and developed it into several different looks. So I thought I’d show you how I did that, and encourage you – if you’re interested in blackwork – to sit down with some graph paper and doodle out some designs. You’ll be surprised what you can come up with, employing only slight variations on a theme.