The inspiration for designing clothes with custom children’s artwork stems from my own childhood. My earliest memories are of happily creating art with crayons, finger paints and clay. These works told the stories of my life before I could write. I drew lots of houses with fancy curtains, beautiful girls with curly hair and ballet slippers and one of flowers wearing shoes my mother labeled “Dancing Tulips”. The great artist Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he/she grows up.” I wish I still visualized tulips wearing dancing shoes.
In the 1970’s, I graduated from Southern Illinois University with a degree in Art Education and a concentration in fabric arts. While living on a 30-acre farm in the Shawnee National Forest with my husband, I experimented with dying fabrics using local plants and weaving on my floor loom.
After a move farther north in Illinois, I learned to quilt from some masters – the farm women in the community. By then, my two young daughters were creating pictures and telling stories of their own. A favorite memory was when my older daughter, Katie, drew a person and I commented to her about the fine details she added, like one shoe. She quickly corrected me to say that it wasn’t a shoe, but Daddy stepping in dog poop! Using that drawing and other favorites, I appliquéd a quilt for her. It now hangs in her son’s nursery. My younger daughter, Kari, was also a prolific artist. One of her early drawings serves as my logo. She titled it, “The Big Chump Stuck in a Box.”
Later, when living in northern Illinois, I taught art and first and second grades for 21 years. I observed children expressing their feelings through uninhibited artwork even before they could write. Many picture gifts were lovingly displayed around the classroom. Wonderful stories can be told through pictures, but they must be listened to and recorded.
Now my company, Outside the Lines Designs, combines my love of children’s art and fabric by turning drawings into wearable art.
Donna Brandt
Daddy Stepping in Dog Poop
By Katie Age 3